
LAR KY 
FURNACE 

H 1 L D E CARD 
BROOKS 


Iltustrated 
PETER NEWEEL 




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THE LARKY FURNACE 

AND OTHER ADVENTURES OF 
SUE BETTY 

By HILDEGARD BROOKS 

Author of “ Daughters of Desperation ” 

WITH COVER AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER NEWELL 



NEW YORK 

) ) > 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1 906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDfes Received 

FEB 12 1906 

(t C^yrffifht Entry 

<^{1. 9. i h(= 

m>rr 

COPY B. 


V- 


Copyright, 1906 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Publishea Pebruary^ igo6 


DEDICATIONS 


THE LARKY FURNACE 

TO THE CHILDREN OF LITTLE -BROOK 

PIRATES 

TO THE CHILDREN OF FOUR WINDS FARM 

THE WHITE NIGHT 

TO THE CHILDREN OF FAIRHOLT 

WORK WITHOUT WAGES 

TO THE CHILDREN OF OAK GROVE 

THE FISH PICTURE 

TO THE CHILDREN OF NUMBER TWENTY 

ONE OF PLUTARCH’S LIVES 

TO THE CHILDREN OF HEGLER HOUSE 


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CONTENTS 

The Larky Furnace . . * r.j 

PAGE 

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Pirates . . . •! .1 

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The White Night 

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The Fish Picture . 

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1.; . 1 17 

Work Without Wages . 

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One of Plutarch’s Lives 

• :•! 

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ILLUSTRATIONS 

And then She Came Suddenly upon Him 12 ^ 
He Stood and Glared at Sue-Betty with 

Fierce Black Eyes ...... 64 

They Were Off Like a Rush of Wind . 108 ^ 

At the Head of the Basement Stairs Sue- 
Betty Got Hold of the Printer’s Coat 

Tail .135 

Sue-Betty Had to Run along at One Side, 

OR He Certainly Would Have Upset 
THE Whole Business 161 




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THE LARKY FURNACE 



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THE LARKY FURNACE 


B eside the shaded lamp her parents 
sat reading. The hands of the clock 
pointed to bedtime. Sue-Betty hovered 
on the threshold, candle in hand, wait- 
ing for the stroke of the hour; for though 
good-nights had been said, she claimed 
every jot and tittle of her right to stay up 
till eight o’clock. 

In came Maggy with a troubled look 
on her face and reported in a tone of dis- 
tress : 

“ Please, sir, the furnace have gone out.” 
‘‘Then leave the area door unlocked, 
Maggy, so that it can get in again to-night,” 
said Sue-Betty’s father quietly. 

As he spoke, the clock gave its little pre- 
liminary cough, then loudly and clearly be- 
gan to strike ; and obedient to the rule, Sue- 
Betty trotted away upstairs, though she 


4 The Larky Furnace 

longed to stay and ask questions. The 
strange event in the basement had made the 
whole house seem a little uncanny. If the 
furnace had come alive and gone out for the 
evening, what might one not expect from 
the dark, carven clothespress in the upper 
hall? She slipped past it with a fluttering 
heart and hastened to reach her own bright 
room. 

Here she was strongly fortified against 
what she called “ all kinds of scariness.” 
There was the peach-red rug on the floor 
with its two little linear camels woven into 
one end of it. Betty called them her darling 
camules and took care never to step on them 
and always to pat them good-night. There 
were her pictures on the walls, each a bright 
window out of loneliness into storyland. 
These things were company; but she had 
safeguards more than these. There was a 
real horse-shoe over the door and la rabbit’s 
foot in her Box of Secret Treasures and a 
Four-leaf Clover in the heel of her little 


The Larky Furnace 5 

bedroom slipper. What wonder that Sue- 
Betty felt safe when she had closed herself 
in with these? For all she cared now, the 
whole house might come alive and every- 
thing in it march past that charmed cham- 
ber door. 

But if she was no longer frightened, she 
was still excited, and instead of going about 
her orderly preparations for the night she 
plumped down beside her register and 
opened it softly. 

A cool breath of air came up against her 
face, and she heard not a click or a jar or a 
rumble to indicate that the furnace was in 
its usual place. 

He must be really gone,” said Sue-Betty 
shaking her head. ‘‘ It’s the queerest thing 
I ever heard of.” 

And the more she thought about the great 
cellar-creature, the less she liked the idea of 
his going and coming when he pleased. The 
area door was to be left open for him. What 
time was the iron monster supposed to be 


6 The Larky Furnace 

in? Sue-Betty had heard her mother say 
that Maggy should not stay out after ten 
o’clock, because it was not safe to leave the 
kitchen door unlocked when the family went 
to bed. That was a rule of the house; and 
to-night this rule was to be broken ; to-night 
the area door was to be left unbolted? 
Then what — as Sue-Betty demanded of 
herself — ^what was to prevent the burgle- 
bears from entering with their dark-lanterns 
and black masks? Sue-Betty was seriously 
afraid of burgle-bears. 

As she considered the matter anxiously, 
the voices of her father and mother came up 
through the register-pipe. 

“ I don’t like our furnace,” said Sue- 
Betty’s mother, ‘‘ it needs so much looking 
after. There ought to be someone always 
down there to see what it is doing. I think 
we ought to get a new one. This one acts so 
funny. I sometimes think it is dangerous.” 

‘‘My dear, they all act funny; they all 
need looking after,” said Sue-Betty’s father 


7 


The Larky Furnace 

in the tone he uses when he is trying both to 
answer and go on reading. “ Ours went out 
because it wasn’t fed high enough, — it 
doesn’t matter, this warm night.” 

Then they were quiet again downstairs. 

Sue-Betty rose to her feet and drew a long 
breath. It was no longer the open door that 
troubled her — it was the character of the 
furnace himself. Funny, was he? And 
needed looking after? Then why, oh why 
was he ever permitted to go out alone? She 
could not understand her father’s and 
mother’s indifference. Both had agreed the 
furnace was not to be trusted, yet neither of 
them seemed to think of anything to be done 
about it. 

And I can’t, of course. I’m just a little 
girl,” said Sue-Betty sadly. She undressed 
and went to bed. 

The moon shone into the room like very 
quiet daylight — white on the counterpane 
and pale blue on the wall. Sue-Betty lay 
with wide-open eyes, thinking of the furnace 


8 The Larky Furnace 

and getting more and more anxious over his 
absence. She tried to put her mind on other 
things — on sheep walking slowly and bump- 
ing each other, in a long line, — on waves, 
breaking one after another on the hard, 
white beach, — on pigeons flying past blue 
sky by hundreds and hundreds; but the 
harder she tried to fall asleep, the larger 
grew her wakefulness, until it seemed to fill 
up the whole inside of her head. 

At last she heard her father and mother 
go to bed and she knew it must be very late 
indeed: still there came no sound from the 
register to announce that the furnace had 
returned. Could he have come home and 
stolen into his place quietly? Could such a 
heavy, lumbering sheet-iron thing move, 
quietly at all? Sue-Betty thought not. She 
thought it far more likely that the funny 
furnace was up to some mischief, far away 
from home. 

After awhile the moon made its way 
around to where it could look Sue-Betty ia 


The Larky Furnace 9 

the face through the window-pane; and 
the moon’s expression was as troubled as 
Maggy’s had been that evening. “ Don’t you 
think it’s pretty late for your furnace to be 
out? ” it seemed to ask. 

Sue-Betty jumped up and took from under 
Her pillow her Waterbury watch, her huge 
treasure and great joy, and pattered with it 
to the window to read the time by the light 
of the anxious moon. 

Half-past ten! 

“ I think I really must go down and see 
whether, by any chance, he has come in,” 
said Sue-Betty with a sudden courage that 
surprised herself. 

Very hastily she dressed herself, put her 
watch and a lucky-stone she had once found 
on the beach in her pocket, slipped out, and 
tiptoed downstairs through the dark house. 

The small bracket lamp was burning in 
the basement hall and showed Sue-Betty the 
door of the furnace-room ajar. “ I wonder 
how I dare!” she said to herself as she stole 


lo The Larky Furnace 

up and peeped in. Sure enough, the place 
where the great furnace usually stood was 
empty. The thing was really gone. A beam 
of moonlight fell across the space through 
the small high window and gleamed in the 
corner on the heap of shining coal. 

“ Now I’ll just see whether he is coming,” 
murmured Sue-Betty, and she went to the 
area door. It was left unbolted, according 
to her father’s directions. Sue-Betty opened 
it softly and slipped out into the area. 

This was full of moonlight from end to 
end, and the whole length of it on the stone 
floor lay the ashes and cinders the furnace 
had scattered as he went out. 

“Untidy old thing! ” exclaimed Sue-Betty 
and she followed the trail out upon the 
lawn. Here, when she saw it led down 
towards the stables, she was truly alarmed. 

“ Has he gone to sleep in the hay, like a 
tramp? He’ll surely set it afire! ” — and she 
ran away after him as fast as she could. 

Her anxiety on this point was soon at rest, 


II 


The Larky Furnace 

however. Just before he had reached the 
stables, the furnace had turned and gone out 
of the back gate into the highroad. 

“ So long as I have started and the track 
is so plain,” said Sue-Betty, “ I’ll just go 
after him and tell him what time it is.” 

It was really a remarkably warm night. 
The air was as sweet on the cheeks as in sum- 
mer evenings. Had it not been for the su- 
mach standing scarlet by the moonlit road- 
side, one would not have believed it was late 
October. For all that she was on an errand 
so important as to bring an erring furnace 
home, Sue-Betty skipped and ran along 
right gaily. Down the hard, white road she 
went, where the slim, black cedars threw 
still blacker shadows straight across it. They 
looked like so many crevasses that ought to 
be jumped. Just for play, Sue-Betty jumped 
them, every one. She found herself so light 
on her feet that she seemed hardly to come 
down again; it was more like skimming 
along than like actual jumping. 


12 


The Larky Furnace 

One gets over the ground very fast in this 
way. Presently Sue-Betty found herself 
miles from home, crossing the railroad 
track where the road runs towards Snake 
Hill. Still the trail could be plainly fol- 
lowed where the furnace had passed along. 

And then she came suddenly upon him. 

He was resting by the roadside, half-sit- 
ting on the stone wall. Although she had 
been looking out for him every minute, 
when Sue-Betty’s eyes actually fell upon the 
big fellow in his huge, galvanized iron 
jacket and cap, looking so coldly grey in the 
moonlight, with his monstrous, pipey arms 
crossed composedly before him, — ^when she 
came upon him thus at the turn of the road, 
she was so startled that she jumped back- 
wards into the air like a frightened kitten. 

Fortunately she came down so lightly as 
to make no noise on the hard road and the 
furnace never even glanced towards her. 
His head was bent forward as if he were 
half asleep. 





And then She Came Suddenly upon Him 








.. 


13 


The Larky Furnace 

Sue-Betty was awhile uncertain what to 
do. To tell a thing as large as that — ‘‘ Come ! 
Go home! It’s late,” was rather more than 
she could nerve herself to do. Then she re- 
membered that actions speak louder than 
words, and she drew her Waterbury watch, 
meaning to march up close and hold its face 
in the moonlight, so that the furnace would 
have to read the time. 

Just then, away down the road, arose such 
a clanking sound as reminded Sue-Betty 
of ghosts and chains. She stood still and 
listened. 

The sound drew nearer and nearer and 
Sue-Betty, turning about, saw a big, dark 
thing coming along behind her — actually, 
another furnace! 

She jumped sideways into a sumach 
thicket, cowered low and hardly wanted to 
breathe. Up came this second furnace, 
clanked past Sue-Betty without turning his 
head her way, and then Sue-Betty’s furnace 
called out in greeting : — 




The Larky Furnace 

Is that you, Clang-Dickens? ” 

“It’s me, Boiler-Bulge!” returned the 
newcomer. 

Sue-Betty was glad to find out the name 
of her own furnace — though she did not 
think Boiler-Bulge a pretty name. Their 
voices were big and rough, and grated like 
scraping iron. 

“ I’ve been waiting for you over an hour,” 
grumbled Boiler-Bulge, Sue-Betty’s fur- 
nace. “ The night will be half gone before 
we meet the other boys.” 

“ Couldn’t get out a minute sooner, 
Bulge,” returned Clang-Dickens. “The old 
man was monkeying with my draughts as 
late as eight o’clock. Rake my cinders! but 
I was mad ! ” 

If Sue-Betty was worried about her fur- 
nace before, how do you suppose she felt 
now that she found him in the company of 
this Clang-Dickens, — ungrammatical, dis- 
respectful, even profane? 

“ Well, come along, I guess the boys will 


The Larky Furnace 15 

wait for us,” said Sue-Betty’s furnace, and 
they started off together. 

Instead of taking the road, they clambered 
over the stone wall where Boiler-Bulge had 
been waiting: a great clashing sound they 
made on the stones, and knocked down the 
wall besides. Sue-Betty found quite a 
breach when she slipped out of her nook to 
follow them. 

(For how could she let her own furnace 
go off with this horrid one, not knowing 
what they were up to? If furnaces 
all were funny and all needed looking 
after, this meeting of the two with “ other 
boys ” must mean some sort of mis- 
chief.) 

I’m about starved,” said Boiler-Bulge, 
as they trudged along across the moonlit 
field. His words floated back to Sue-Betty 
and mortified her greatly. “ They’ve been 
keeping me disgracefully low at our house. 
It’s that sort of thing that makes a fellow 
want to go off on a tear.” 


i6 The Larky Furnace 

“ Just what my father told my mother,” 
murmured Sue-Betty. 

About three coals a day and draughts 
shut down fit to smother,” Boiler-Bulge con- 
tinued his complaint. That’s been the rule 
this last week. I mean to smash that ther- 
mometer that hangs in the shade before I 
turn in to-night. When it goes up, my ra- 
tions go down. After hibernating all sum- 
mer, a fellow wakes up with something of 
an appetite, eh? ” 

“ You bet your bottom ashpan! ” returned 
the vulgar Clang-Dickens. ‘‘ Rake my cin- 
ders, if I couldn’t take a good-sized boulder 
like a biscuit! I’ve had just your experience 
this week — only worse, because my folks 
never do give me anything more substantial 
than wood. I don’t live high on anthracite 
like you.” 

‘‘ Wood is good enough, too, if you can 
get enough of it,” returned Boiler-Bulge. 

How many cords did Bang-Rattler say 
there are up yonder? ” 


The Larky Furnace 17 

‘^Bang-Rattler. Another furnace!” said 
Sue-Betty anxiously to herself. 

“ Oh, there are stacks and stacks, — enough 
for a good-sized picnic,” returned Clang- 
Dickens. “ Tell you what. Bulgy, we are 
going to make a regular, old-fashioned stoke 
of it to-night.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t call me Bulgy,” 
said Sue-Betty’s furnace with a touch of 
dignity. “ It sounds low. And I don’t like 
the term ‘ stoke ’ as you use it. If you mean 
feast or banquet, say feast or banquet. Don’t 
talk, my dear Clang, like a furnace who has 
never heard any good English through his 
registers.” 

“ Oh well! We haven’t all got a patent, 
spiral, hot-water attachment down our in- 
wards to elevate and spiritualise us,” re- 
turned Clang-Dickens with a rusty laugh. 

They were both a little cross after that, 
like hungry men, and lumbered along with- 
out more conversation. Sue-Betty followed 
close. Was it possible that her Boiler- 


1 8 The Larky Furnace 

Bulge, who seemed a little more refined than 
his companion, could bring himself to steal 
cordwood on the hillside? 

Now the way led up a lane. The furnaces 
had thrown down the bars to pass into it and 
did not take the trouble to put them up 
again. Sue-Betty knew this might make 
trouble for the farmer and put them up 
again herself. She was all the more indig- 
nant with Clang-Dickens and Boiler-Bulge. 

When they had gone up the lane to where 
began the lower wooded slopes of Snake 
Hill, they left it again and once more 
climbed a stone wall. Then what a crashing 
and snapping there was when the two of 
them walked through the dry and twiggy 
underbrush of the woods. The dead leaves 
rustled on the ground, the branches crackled 
as in a fire. 

Presently Clang-Dickens gave a whistle, 
surprisingly like that from a locomotive. 
Indeed Sue-Betty thought for the moment 
that some engine from the railroad below 


The Larky Furnace 19 

had come up into the woods to join this iron 
company. 

Having whistled twice, Clang-Dickens 
stopped and listened for an answer. iBoiler- 
Bulge paused too, and Sue-Betty behind 
them, so that all the woods were still. 

<< We’ve come too far to the right,” re- 
marked Boiler-Bulge. They ought to hear 
us, by this time.” 

Unless they’ve loaded up and gone on 
to the quarry,” said Clang-Dickens. “ It 
would be just about mean enough of them.” 

“ I am sure the furnaces whom I have the 
honour to call my friends would do no such 
thing,” returned Boiler-Bulge very severely. 

I tell you, we have come too far to the 
right. We are now about as far up as the 
quarry.” 

“Teach your airshaft! I know better,” 
snarled Clang-Dickens. “ Haven’t I been 
to these wood-piles before? They are right 
around here somewhere. I remember those 
white birches growing in a clump over 


20 


The Larky Furnace 

there. The wood is within a hundred yards, 
you can bet your bottom ashpan.” 

So they nosed about and threshed about 
and blundered about in the thicket; and Sue- 
Betty stood off and watched them. 

Suddenly Clang-Dickens gave a roar of 
rage. 

Rake my cinders, if those rusty rapscal- 
lions haven’t gone and cleaned up the whole 
pile between them and then lit out! Look 
here, Bulge! Here’s where the cordwood 
was! Here are the stakes that held it.” 

He had hardly finished and Boiler-Bulge 
had hardly lurched over there to see, when a 
big, three-trumpeted laugh blared out, a 
laugh so loud and boisterous that Sue-Betty 
had to hold her ears. It seemed to come 
from behind a great pile of boulders close 
by; and presently, from that hiding place, 
three more furnaces rose to their feet and 
rolled forward, clanking against each other 
and holding each other up in their uproar- 
ious merriment. 


21 


The Larky Furnace 

Boiler-Bulge and Clang-Dickens stood 
still, facing them. Sue-Betty was sure there 
would now begin a fearful battle. 

When the three had stopped laughing 
and had begun to cough, Boiler-Bulge 
spoke. Sue-Betty was gratified that he 
spoke quietly. 

“ Do you think you boys have acted on 
the square about this? ” he asked, and his 
deep voice trembled with feeling as though 
someone were shaking him down. 

This set the hilarious trio off again. Now 
Clang-Dickens broke loose excitedly. 

“You rusty rips — you broken-down, 
cracked-plated, unhinged, old iron gas-gen- 
erators ” 

*'Mr. Dickens!'^ they all three thun- 
dered out in a stern and dignified chorus; 
and they all stood up straight and separate, 
instead of lolling on each other’s shoulders. 
Now that Betty could distinguish them, one 
appeared huge — much larger than any of 
the others; one was like Boiler-Bulge, only 


22 


The Larky Furnace 

he had shiny parts that glistened in the 
moonlight; and one was small and white 
and had a slender waist like a cadet, — he 
looked as if he had come from the railroad 
station. 

“ Mr. Dickens, you will apologise for 
your language,” said this slender furnace 
with great airs; ‘‘first to my friend, Mr: 
Pounder-Gratings ” (pointing out the huge 
furnace), “ who is with us upon my invita- 
tion and to whom I promised a courteous 
reception; and then to Mr. Nick-Nickel” 
(pointing out the shiny furnace) “and to 
myself.” 

“ Oh, bosh! ” called out the huge furnace 
in a jovial way. (His voice was thunder- 
ous.) “ Don’t apologise to me. I’m no 
stranger to old Clang-Dickens, though I 
am new in this crowd. We used to see each 
other in the factory.” 

“Well, Pounder-Gratings ! is this really 
you? ” cried the angry Clang-Dickens, his 
tone quite changed to friendliness. “ This 


The Larky Furnace 23 

is a rattling good surprise. Where have 
you put up in this region? ” 

‘‘ I’m running the Orphan Asylum over 
yonder on the mountains,” returned the huge 
one, pointing away across the lowlands to 
where the dark range showed black against 
the moonlit sky. This is my first night out. 
They have to keep those infants surprisingly 
warm, and if it weren’t that there are two of 
us, I shouldn’t get off at all. My dear Bang- 
Rattler, I haven’t met this gentleman yet.” 

Now Bang-Rattler (the slender one from 
the station) introduced Sue-Betty’s furnace 
in form; but Boiler-Bulge did not respond 
at once to the other’s cordiality. 

“ I should be more pleased to meet you, 
Mr. Pounder-Gratings, if you had not 
stowed away my share of the cordwood,” he 
said with the frankness of a deeply injured 
person. 

At this the three again burst out laughing. 

Why weren’t you on time? ” cried Nick- 
Nickel between his guffaws. 


24 


The Larky Furnace 


Clang-Dickens was just growing angry 

again and began with Rake my ” when 

the huge Pounder once more made peace by 
explaining to the injured ones that there 
were several untouched cords of wood 
higher up, near the quarry. This quite mol- 
lified the two, and all started off together, 
Pounder-Gratings roaring a song to the tune 
of “Old Dan Tucker.” 



“ The farmer chops the forest trees, 


He ought to axe them ‘ if you please * ; 


He saws them up, he makes his pile. 
I saw the pile ; it made me smile.” 


At this all the furnaces laughed boister- 
ously; but Sue-Betty, who now knew that 
they were stealing wood, was shocked and 
grieved beyond expression. How was she 
to draw her furnace away from among 
these wicked ones? She could only follow 
and trust for a chance to speak to him aside. 

The other woodpile reached, Sue-Betty 
saw with tears of shame in her eyes how her 


25 


The Larky Furnace 

naughty furnace fell thievishly upon it, with 
open doors, and crammed himself greedily 
full. Clang-Dickens was not behind him 
in this, and the other furnaces helped both. 
In three minutes the whole pile had disap- 
peared; and on went the wretches, crash- 
ing pell-mell up the hillside on their way to 
the quarry. 

Still Sue-Betty followed; and while they 
entered the semi-circular space between the 
cliff walls of limestone, she clambered hast- 
ily around the margin of the quarry and 
came out on the brink above them. There, 
by throwing herself on the ground face for- 
ward, she could peer down on them from the 
shadow of some sheltering bushes and see 
and hear as from a gallery in a theatre. 

Really, the quarry was a weird and scary- 
looking place in the cold, blue moonlight. 
The limestone was much weathered here 
and there, and presented rounded, life-like 
heads and knobby animal shapes. There 
were cracks like grins, and holes like open 


26 The Larky Furnace 

mouths, all very curious and unsettling to 
look upon. But if the grey walls of the 
quarry were distressing in the dim light, the 
bottom was really fearful. There was a 
great black pool, five-sided and angular. 
Around it squatted the huge iron monsters, 
all reflected in the dark water so that there 
seemed to be ever so manf more. By the 
time Sue-Betty had reached her point of ob- 
servation, they were already passing a 
lighted brand from one to the other, as men 
in smoking might do with a lighted match. 
Each furnace in turn carefully lit the fuel 
within him; and now arose a great crack- 
ling and smoking, and the smell of burning 
wood. 

This is cosy!” cried Nick-Nickel; and 
he began to sing “ We Won’t Go Home Till 
Morning ” and sang it very much out of 
tune. When they all joined in for the 
chorus, it was like a boiler factory and forty 
fog-horns accompanying a brass band. 
Meanwhile they began to get hot, and to 


The Larky Furnace 27 

throw off sparks, and to get a dull-red 
colour about the doors. 

It was an awful sight to Sue-Betty to see 
her furnace engaged in this carouse. She 
longed to spring up upon the brink of the 
cliff and to make a speech to them all then 
and there. She could surely, she thought, 
have said something to shame them and send 
them home. But the largest megaphone on 
earth would not have made Sue-Betty’s 
voice big enough to penetrate that awful 
din. 

They sang on and on, and grew hotter and 
hotter, till at last they were fire-red all over. 
The glow fell on the walls of the quarry and 
now the shapes near the weathered margin 
seemed to move in a shadowy, flickering 
dance. Hot air began to fan Sue-Betty’s 
cheek as from a giant register. It was get- 
ting unendurable. 

And now there was no tune or rhythm to 
what they sang, each furnace was off on a 
drunken roar of his own. They rose, all 


28 The Larky Furnace 

red-hot as they were, and joined hands about 
the pool and pranced around it with a fear- 
ful clashing and clanking. Then it seemed 
to be part of the game to separate and for 
each furnace to go off on a special whirl or 
jig in his own corner of the quarry, while 
all together they kept up the noise unceas- 
ingly. 

Suddenly came the penetrating locomotive 
whistle of Clang-Dickens piercing the up- 
roar and all stopped short. A startling 
quiet fell. Sue-Betty felt that this was her 
chance for a speech, urging them to moder- 
ation ; but she was by this time so frightened 
that her teeth chattered together in spite of 
the hot air from below; besides, Clang- 
Dickens took the floor almost instantly. 

Boys! ” he cried, and his tone was full 
of badness, ‘‘ Let’s set the woods on fire.” 

This wicked proposition was hailed with 
a hoarse “ Hurrah ” from all the others, and 
they clapped their furnace doors in loud 
applause so that the quarry flashed with 


29 


The Larky Furnace 

light and the moonlight was eclipsed. In 
that fierce red glow, where it fell on the 
limestone walls, one could see the fringing 
rocks twisted into weird expressions of de- 
light and malice. 

Sue-Betty caught sight of this uncanny 
sculpturing, quite lost heart, and up and ran 
away. 

Down she scurried through the bush, like 
a chased rabbit, as far and as fast as she 
could go. Then she came to a fence and the 
road beyond it, and she stopped to breathe. 

Here the moonlight fell pleasantly in the 
open and all was quiet. Pointed cedars 
marched up and down the road on either 
side; and away to the right she saw the 
white-armed signal post that marked a rail- 
road crossing. Presently Sue-Betty had re- 
gained her breath and collected her thoughts 
and now she was very sorry she had run 
away. 

“ It was very scary, but I could have stood 
it, with the Lucky-stone in my pocket,’^ she 


30 The Larky Furnace 

said to herself, “ and if I had staid, I might 
have prevented their setting the woods on 
fire.” Sue-Betty knew that the autumn fires 
on the hills and motintains do a great deal 
of harm to the timber and she felt a load of 
responsibility. — I might at least have tried. 
I think I must go back.” 

But even while she spoke, she heard the 
sound of their clanking tread and saw the 
fiery furnaces coming along down the very 
road she was on. Alas! she found she had 
no courage to confront them, and she 
crouched and hid behind the bole of a cedar. 

On they came, quiet now, almost stealthy 
in their tread, precisely as if bent on more 
mischief. When they passed Sue-Betty, In- 
dian-file, Clang-Dickens leading, Pounder- 
Gratings bringing up the rear, all lurched 
eagerly forward, they reminded her of so 
many bandits going to commit a robbery. 

Oh what are they up to now? ” poor 
Sue-Betty questioned, as she crept out and 
peered after them. They marched on down 


31 


The Larky Furnace 

as far as the railroad crossing. There 
they paused, stuck their big heads together 
and seemed to deliberate. Then Sue-Betty 
watched them file away to the left, down the 
railroad cut. She ran after them, stopped, 
listened, ran on again ; and so came down to 
the tracks. 

The rails led away in four shiny streaks 
towards the moon. A little way beyond her, 
the bank was steep and sandy, and under it, 
in the shadow of a hollow, she saw the red 
glow of the furnaces. Why were they lurk- 
ing there so close to the track? 

She herself was in the full blaze of moon- 
light now, and they might easily have seen 
her and rushed out upon her, had they been 
so minded. She was not thinking of her own 
safety. Away down the track she heard a 
coming train, and there was a lump in her 
throat. Those red-hot furnaces meant evil 
— and there were people on that train. How 
could she warn the engineer, how could 
she make a signal? 


32 The Larky Furnace 

There was a sort of lameness in her bones. 
She could only stand and shake, and stare 
down the track helplessly, to where the glar- 
ing eye of the onrushing locomotive grew 
momentarily larger. 

Now the train drew near, now there was 
a stir in the hollow. In another moment it 
all happened before the horrified Sue- 
Be tty’s very eyes. The locomotive came 
roaring up the cut, and the whole five 
furnaces, red-hot, clashing, yelling murder- 
ously, sprang suddenly into the track, and 
flung their doors open, so that the light 
flashed into the locomotive’s very eye. It 
stopped, of course, like a frightened horse, 
and reared straight up into the air, its wheels 
spinning, its driving-rod kicking spasmodi- 
cally. The cars behind jarred and bumped 
against each other. Then the locomotive 
shied sideways off the track, and jerked sev- 
eral of the cars off with it. Over they all 
went into the ditch, with great wreckage 
and the surf-like thunder of falling coals 


The Larky Furnace 33 

with which the cars, it appeared, were 
loaded. 

That was all. The furnaces were gone. 
The locomotive lay kicking in the ditch, 
the half-emptied, piled-up cars lay still. A 
very angry engineer and two scared brake- 
men stood about the prostrate locomotive 
talking loudly. They were interrupted by 
the quavering high voice of a little girl. 

“ Please, sir, is anybody killed?” 

They all turned and faced Sue-Betty, 
who was trembling to the very end of her 
pigtail. 

‘‘ Well, who on airth be you? ” demanded 
the engineer. 

“ Is anybody hurt? ” insisted Sue-Betty 
nervously. 

‘‘ No, Sissy, we ain’t hurt; but I guess our 
old engine’s pretty well bust up.” 

“ Oh dear, oh dear! I am so sorry,” wailed 
Sue-Betty. “ Can’t anything be done? ” 

“ Why yes, there’s a heap to be done. 
We’ve got to rig up signals on the track and 


34 The Larky Furnace 

we’ve eot to wire the news of the smash- 
up— J’ 

I mean for the poor, hurt locomotive,” 
cried Sue-Betty. “ What kind of a doctor 
do you call in? ” 

“Look here, Jake,” said the engineer in 
lowered tone to one of the brakemen, “ I 
guess this little girl lives nearby and has 
wandered off in her sleep like. You just 
pick her up and carry her home to her 
Maw.” 

Sue-Betty jumped for fright and made off 
hurriedly. The men were too absorbed with 
the wreck to care to run after her. Now her 
chief idea was to find the furnaces again. 
Creatures so malignant as to scare a loco- 
motive off the track might do any wicked 
thing that night. She regained the road, 
crossed the track and hurried on, looking 
to every side. Once she looked back, and 
beheld the dark, wooded side of Snake Hill 
studded with a brilliant round spot of fire. 

“ They’ve done it. They’ve started it, and 


35 


The Larky Furnace 

it will spread and the mountain will be 
burned bare,’’ cried Sue-Betty indignantly. 

She stopped often to listen, knowing that 
the noisy furnaces would surely betray their 
whereabouts. Sure enough, the clanking 
sound soon led her away from the road, 
towards a little dell, where she found the 
monsters crouched together in the bush. 
They were shouldering each other, and 
chuckling and clucking in heavy, hysteri- 
cal glee over the success of their practical 
joke. She crept as close to them as she could 
for the heat. Five fiery furnaces are not to 
be approached too nearly. 

“ It’ll take them half this night to clear 
the track, though,” cried Nick-Nickel, 
through a partial pause in the noise of their 
merriment. “ And we can’t get a mouthful 
of coal until those men get away.” 

“My bricks! I never thought of that,” 
cried Clang-Dickens. “ Perhaps they’ll set 
guards over the wreck, and we won’t get the 
coal at all.” 


36 iThe Larky Furnace 

“Couldn’t we scare away the guards?” 
asked Pounder-Gratings, throwing up his 
pipe-clad arms and>clapping his doors, il- 
lustrative of all frightfulness. 

“ We might — and then again we might- 
n’t,” said Clang-Dickens. “ Those rail- 
road men ain’t so very scary.” 

Pounder-Gratings sat still a moment as if 
brooding over something. Then he raised 
his head and let forth the following awful 
speech : 

Fd rather have a juicy brakeman than a 
ton of coal!*^ 

The words fell on the assembled furnaces 
like a dead weight. Not one of them spoke 
or moved. Sue-Betty shuddered in the 
bush. Then Boiler-Bulge arose in mighty 
self-righteousness and reviled Pounder- 
Gratings for his horrid thought. He drew 
a fine distinction between the harmless, 
youthful mischief of the kind in which the 
company usually engaged, and the murder- 
ous thought which Pounder-Gratings, the 


37 


The Larky Furnace 

newcomer, had introduced. Boiler-Bulge 
spoke with eloquence; and he wound up, 
with a magnificent gesture, I am a vege- 
tarian! ** 

At this Clang-Dickens burst into a mock- 
ing laugh. 

Coal is a mineral!” he cried. You’re 
no vegetarian.” 

Coal is vegetable,” returned Boiler- 
Bulge hotly. “ Peat, soft coal, anthracite — 
where do you draw the line? ” 

''I draw the line at human flesh,” said 
Nick-Nickel firmly. I’ve never tasted it, 
and I’m sure it isn’t good.” 

“ And I know it is good,” thundered 
Pounder-Gratings. I’ve tasted it. I had 
a lick at a kitchen-maid’s hand once; I’ve 
never forgotten it. She was trying to heat 
some water in me one night, when the 
kitchen fire had gone out. What a taste I 
got! I’ve been crazy for it ever since.” 

By this time Sue-Betty was terrified be- 
yond expression. She had never imagined 


38 The Larky Furnace 

they were man-eating furnaces. Pounder’s 
confession had plainly made a strong effect 
upon the others. Neither Boiler-Bulge nor 
Nick-Nickel made any further objection. 
All sat mumchance, while the fires within 
them glowed hotter and hotter, and the 
scorching air rolled away from them in 
tremulous waves. 

Suddenly Bang- Rattler burst into a song, 
— a dreadful song, in praise of Moloch, the 
King of all Furnaces. It told how, in 
heathen days, infants were flung into his 
fiery mouth to feed him. The actual words 
were too awful and too jumbled to write 
down just as he sang them, but their mean- 
ing was clear to Sue-Betty, and alas! to the 
furnaces that heard them. One and all they 
began to rock in rhythm and moan and rum- 
ble in response, when Bang-Rattler paused; 
so that they worked themselves up to such a 
pitch of excitement, that it seemed they 
would presently be ready for anything. 

Then Clang-Dickens jumped to his feet 


39 


The Larky Furnace 

and yelled to them all to listen. They were 
quiet instantly, and Clang’s voice fell to a 
■ husky whisper. 

“ Don’t let’s fool with the tough old 
brakeman. Let’s get Pounder to lead us up 
to his orphan asylum!*^ 

At these words they all let forth a howl 
of delight, and Pounder-Gratings roared 
above the tumult for them to follow him. 
Boiler-Bulge, as Sue-Betty observed with 
breaking heart, had forgotten his high prin- 
ciples and his vegetarianism, and rattled 
away after the others, who were already out 
of the dell. She was up and after them 
without loss of time, her hair on end with 
horror. 

‘‘I must get there first! I must pass 
them,” she cried to herself as she sped along. 
She knew the road, knew it made a great 
bend and that (as the furnaces followed the 
bend) she could cut them off by taking a 
hasty way across the fields. ■ 

That feather-lightness was still upon her. 


40 The Larky Furnace 

She seemed to drift and fly across the moon- 
lit fields, and reached the tree-shadowed 
road again a good quarter of a mile ahead 
of the furnaces. Now she felt more easy, 
for it seemed certain that she could beat the 
furnaces by long enough to warn the grown- 
ups who were in charge of the orphans. 

As the road wound and rose and fell across 
the country toward the mountains, she could 
look back, from time to time, and get 
sight of the fiery band of furnaces, visible 
far through the night. When she paused 
long enough to listen she caught their 
dreadful song of Moloch with which they 
were keeping themselves in the spirit of 
voracious murder. Still further back she 
saw Snake Hill, on whose flank the spot of 
fire had begun to open out into a great semi- 
circle, like a monstrous shiny snake. 

Now the road began to go up. The or- 
phan asylum was high on the mountain-side. 
As roads do, this one took the easiest way 
up to the heights, ascending along the deep- 


41 


The Larky Furnace 

cut glen of a stream. It was a side-hill road, 
rocks had been blasted away here and there 
to give it room, a guard-rail bounded it on 
the falling-off side, towards the bed of the 
stream. For the most part this way led 
along at some height above the water, and 
ever and again one could get long looks 
down the glen into the open country. Sue- 
Betty paused a moment at such a point to 
notice that, far across the low-lands. Snake 
Hill lay in full view, like a picture framed 
by the sloping sides of the glen; and that its 
side was branded by an enlarging figure 
drawn in curves and loops of fire. 

It looks something as if it were trying 
to write a D,” observed Sue-Betty with in- 
terest; and then she remembered the im- 
portance of her errand and hurried on 
again. 

It was easier to skim along up that moun- 
tain road with scarcely any effort than to 
think of what she would do when she 
reached the orphan asylum. The faster Sue- 


42 The Larky Furnace 

Betty went, the harder she found it to plan. 
Simply to tell the orphan asylum grown-ups 
that the furnaces were coming to devour the 
children, without bringing them any plan 
for defence, did not satisfy Sue-Betty. 

“ They’ll all lose their heads and won’t 
know what to do,” she said to herself. 

They’ll lock their area door, but the five 
furnaces can batter it down. They’ll want 
to run away with all the orphans ; but how 
can fifty babies be got out of bed and washed 
and dressed in time to run away? ” 

She paused once more to listen to the 
furnace song, far down the glen, so as to 
judge how much time she had gained upon 
them; and once more her eyes fell on the 
burning forest on Snake Hill. 

Why it is a D,” she exclaimed in aston- 
ishment, and so it was — a great, capital D, 
done in fire, as plain and clear as in any 
copy-book. Sue-Betty felt that this must be 
a message to her, and, as she ran on, she 
puzzled over what it might mean. 


The Larky Furnace 43 

“ D? D? What does D stand for? ” she 
asked herself. ‘‘ It stands for do, and I must 
do something. Why doesn’t it write me 
what to do? ” 

Murmuring over to herself all the things 
beginning with D that might be done, — as 
delay, discourage, divert, draw away, drag 
away, etc. — she ran down a falling stretch 
of the road, to where it crossed the bed of 
the brook by a low bridge. 

“Now D also stands for drench — and for 
drown,” said Sue-Betty meditatively, stop- 
ping on the bridge. 

All about her rose tall dark trees; but the 
moon was high and looked down into the 
open water-staircase of pools and falls made 
by the brook; and the moonlight showed 
that the water was very low. Just a small 
stream gurgled down among the great 
tumbled rocks of the bed, and only enough 
water trickled over the falls to wet the rocks, 
and make them glisten. 

“ Nobody could get drowned here,” said 


44 The Larky Furnace 

Sue-Betty. “Oh, I remember! All the 
water is held back up there in the reservoir.” 

And then she bethought herself that D 
stands for dam; and she saw a way to save 
the orphans as plainly as one sees a path in 
which one is walking. She jumped over 
the railing of the bridge, down among the 
rocks, and forthwith took her way up stream 
as fast as she could skip from boulder to 
boulder, as fast as she could scramble up 
along the margin of the water-falls. Now 
she was in the friendly moonlight, now in 
the cold, black shadow of rocky ledges and 
low-hanging firs; where she could not see, 
she felt her way; and whether it vy^as her 
Lucky-stone, or her own particular light- 
footedness, she never once stumbled or 
slipped. 

At last she came into the open, and up 
against a great wall of masonry, — the dam 
of the reservoir. Over its weir there fell a 
thin and shiny curtain of water; but Sue- 
Betty knew there were thousands and thou- 


45 


The Larky Furnace 

sands of tons more behind that great wall. 
She made for the sluice-gates on the right. 

And when she had clambered up to the 
level of the dam, sure enough, there was a 
broad, quiet, brimming lake of water, rip- 
pling coolly in the night wind. 

‘‘ Here’s enough to quench their appetites 
for orphans,” said Sue-Betty resolutely. 
She put her hands on the long lever of the 
gates and stood very still to listen. 

Far below in the hollows of the glen 
she heard the hoarse chorus of the furnaces, 
still roaring out their song. She waited till 
it sounded directly below her, — and then — 
then — she swung her whole weight upon 
the lever-arm. 

Slowly — slowly — ^with tremendous dig- 
nity, the lever-arm came bowing down. At 
her feet arose a deafening rush of waters. 
With the roar of a thousand waves, they 
welled out of their placid lake and went 
down the glen in a solid glittering wall, 
crashing into white spray on the fringing 


46 The Larky Furnace 

rocks, and flooding the darkness of the 
woods. 

A minute later arose a howling above the 
tumult of the waters like fire-bells and rail- 
road danger-signals and fog-horns and 
every other imaginable whoop of distress. 
At the same moment a great, white cloud of 
steam rose up out of the dark glen, and 
hung above it in the moonlight, like a veil. 

I caught them! I caught them! ” cried 
Sue-Betty jubilantly. She left her gates 
and flew away down along the brawling 
waters to see the effect of her work. When 
she came down near to where the bridge had 
been, the steam was so thick she was in a 
fog; but she could hear the five furnaces 
roaring, sputtering, clashing, plunging, bel- 
lowing to each other for help. 

Presently Boiler-Bulge plunged past her, 
visible for a moment through the mist — 
and oh, how black and cold and dripping 
wet he was! Not a spark of his fire re- 
mained, not a vestige of his spirit for wild 


The Larky Furnace 47 

adventure. He neither saw nor heard Sue- 
Betty, though she called to him, but hur- 
riedly limped past her and into the road, 
scuttling away homeward. As he did not 
wait for his companions, Sue-Betty could 
not either; but she judged from Boiler- 
Bulge’s condition that all were wet and 
sobered and she hastened on to see her own 
furnace safely home. Indeed, it was some 
trouble to keep him in view. Though he 
limped, though he groaned, though the 
water trickled from him still, and his doors 
clapped desolately, like the shutters of an 
uncared-for house, still he hurried on as 
if his life depended on his getting home. 
His companions followed, at no great dis- 
tance behind Sue-Betty, and she caught a 
few words of what they were mournfully 
singing : 

** Oh, Mother, I am tired now! 

Come, put me in my little bed I ” 

And then again, a little later, 

“ Oh, Brother dear, kiss me good-night ” 


48 The Larky Furnace 

But if they were calling upon Boiler- 
Bulge, it was in vain. He did not even 
wait for them at his own back-gate to kiss 
them good-night; but went plunging, 
stamping forward across the lawn towards 
the house. 

From this behaviour towards his evil 
companions, and from the sounds he made, 
like sobs of repentance, Sue-Betty concluded 
with deep satisfaction that Boiler-Bulge 
had been on his last lark. 

Such a fumbling as he made at the latch 
when he reached the area door, such a time 
he had, adjusting his pipes to the registers, 
when he was finally back in his own room! 
Sue-Betty did not wait for him to get settled, 
but made fast the area door and hurried up- 
stairs. By the time she was ready for bed 
again herself, the noises from the cellar had 
subsided, except for the penitent’s occa- 
sional sighs. 

The moon still looked in at the window, 
serene and smiling now; and once more 


The Larky Furnace 49 

Sue-Betty consulted her watch in the bright 
light 

It was still half-past ten. 

Sue-Betty couldn’t understand it at first, 
for the watch was ticking briskly. Then 
she decided that it must have been asleep 
in her pocket through the whole adventure, 
and just that minute waked up and started 
on again; so with an easy mind, she crept 
back into bed. 




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PIRATES 


I T was in Clinton-on*the-Sound, where 
the summer cottages have walls so thin 
you can hear all that is said in the next 
room. Sue-Betty was drawing in one room, 
and her mother was talking in the other. 
She was telling Mrs. Wright about Ned 
and Caroline, who had just been married 
and gone to New York. 

^^You know,” said Sue-Betty’s mother, 
they have undertaken light housekeep- 
ing.” 

The little girl was so astonished when 
she heard this that she dropped her pencil. 
It rolled off on the floor, and she did not 
think to pick it up, but sat wondering. Ned 
and Caroline were keeping a lighthouse, 
and she had never been told about it? It 
hardly seemed possible. Lighthouse keep- 
53 


54 


Pirates 


ing was to Sue-Betty the most fascinating 
and useful business there was in the world. 
She had thought again and again how well 
she would do it when she was grown — if the 
Government would only trust her with a 
lighthouse. 

But Ned and Caroline seemed the unlik- 
liest people in the world for such a job. 
Caroline was Sue-Betty’s grown-up sister, 
and Ned, now a brother-in-law, was an old 
friend; so Sue-Betty knew them both, and 
knew their special faults. They were the 
most careless, absent-minded pair imagina- 
ble. 

They never heard or saw anything but 
each other; and as for keeping a lamp 
going, they could not even be trusted with 
one they were reading by themselves. 

“They’ll soon get tired of that,** Mrs. 
Wright was saying. “It won’t suit either 
one of them at all ; ” and Sue-Betty heartily 
agreed with her. 

It troubled her after she went to beH that 


Pirates 


55 


night There was a whistling east wind, 
and it was very dark. Sue-Betty thought of 
the harbour of New York, which she had 
never seen, and of the many, many ships 
that went in and out there. They would 
all be depending on the lighthouse on such 
a night as this. Were Ned and Caroline 
perhaps reading aloud to each other, and 
had they forgotten to trim the wicks? 

Sue-Betty slept a little, but kept waking 
up again. The wind was very loud. At 
last she jumped up and looked out of the 
window. 

By the bright starlight she saw the three 
sailboats that were always anchored off the 
beach; and to her surprise and dismay, she 
saw there was something wrong with the 
See-Saw, Ned’s boat he had left behind him 
at Clinton. 

This would never do; Sue-Betty slipped 
on her bathing-suit and stole down-stairs 
and out. When Ned was gone, Sue-Betty 
was the only one in the family who really 


56 Pirates 

knew and cared about sailboats, and she 
felt responsible. 

There was quite a surf and the wind blew 
keen. The little girl was too troubled to 
mind it. She stood close to the white and 
black water, and wondered what she could 
do; for now she saw plainly that someone 
had left the jib unfurled. It was flopping 
and flopping about, and the boom was 
swinging loose. A creaking sound, like a 
real live complaint, came across the water; 
for no sailboat likes to be left like that. 

“ I’ll come out and put you up, you poor 
old thing,” cried Sue-Betty energetically, 
and she laid hold of a rowboat on the 
beach and hauled it to the water. It sur- 
prised her to find herself so unusually 
strong. Everything she touched felt light, 
and, in spite of the cold wind, she was in a 
glow. 

By good luck, the oars and rowlocks 
were in the boat. Sue-Betty knew how to 
handle them, With long, strong strokes she 


Pirates 


57 

rowed. The wind could not blow her out 
of her course, she kept out of the trough of 
the waves. How she wished there was 
somebody on the beach to watch her and 
see how well she did it! No grown-ups 
would believe how well she could row. 

It seemed less dark when she was out on 
the water. Sue-Betty saw her way to the 
buoy, fastened her boat, boarded the See- 
Saw, and started to attend to her rigging. 
But while she worked at the sails a won- 
derful idea came to her. The wind was 
from the east — why not sail westward 
to New York? Why not take Ned and 
Caroline their sailboat, and, at the same 
time, satisfy herself that the lights of their 
lighthouse were kept burning? 

Sue-Betty had never been to New York; 
but she knew people had sailed there from 
Clinton: she had never managed the See- 
Saw all alone; but she had been Ned’s first 
mate all summer, and felt perfectly secure 
with sheet and tiller. Perhaps she might 


Pirates 


S8 

have thought about getting her mother’s 
permission, — but it was a curious night to 
Sue-Betty. As fast as an idea came into her 
head, she had to begin acting on it, — she felt 
so lively and so capable. The only thing 
she could think about now was the fact that 
there was a lighthouse in the family. Some- 
body had to take care of it. 

So she set sail for New York. 

The wind was fine, and the stars were 
bright; Sue-Betty was so happy she could 
have shouted. But she steadily and quietly 
held the tiller and never tied the sheet, and 
kept her eyes on the sail, which hollowed 
beautifully before her, white in the white 
faint light from the sparkling sky. She 
knew that the good sailor is cautious, not 
daring. When she saw Ned, he would 
surely ask her how she had sailed. She 
meant this night’s trip should prove, once 
for all, that she had learned to manage a 
boat. 

When you go before the wind the air 


Pirates 


59 


seems about calm. Unless you look at the 
water slipping past you’ll never guess how 
fast you’re going. Sue-Betty was expe- 
rienced. She saw lighted villages along the 
Sound appear and pass and fall behind, and 
she exulted in her speed. 

‘‘New York is at the end of the Sound,” 
she said to herself. “I’ll know it by its 
being much bigger than these villages ; and 
the lighthouse of course, will be some- 
where out in front I’ll have no trouble 
finding that/* 

So she sailed on. 

If anybody thinks Sue-Betty was a very 
naughty girl to go off alone that night with- 
out permission, let him read about her ad- 
venture with the furnace. That time she 
had to be out, nearly all night, and did a 
very useful thing. But saving orphans is 
no more important than saving ships, and 
she was worrying now about the lamps in 
the lighthouse. And if anybody thinks it 
rather strange her arm did not begin to 


6o 


Pirates 


ache holding the sheet and the tiller so long, 
let him remember how she handled the 
great levers of the floodgates that night. It 
makes one strong to care very much about 
doing a thing — quite strong enough to do 
it, often. 

As for that sail down the Sound, it can 
not be described. If one has been sailing, 
one knows about it; one simply must have 
the experience to understand it. One is 
told when one gets into a boat to obey 
orders and not to be frightened. That is 
all that one can be told. The joy of sailing, 
and the excitement of sailing, and the real 
live feeling of sailing, one has to get for 
oneself. 

Sue-Betty loved it; and she was almost 
sorry when she saw straight in front of her 
more lights than there could be in a village, 
and knew she was nearing New York. 

As she came skimming nearer and nearer 
on the wings of the wind, she became aware 
of a low flat island between herself and the 


Pirates 


6i 


shining city. On that island stood a tall, 
black tower, perfectly dark— and she knew 
this was the lighthouse, and that her worst 
fears were realised — Ned and Caroline were 
not attending to the lamps. 

“ Oh, isn’t it lucky I came,” cried Sue- 
Betty. She beached the See-Saw on the 
strand at the foot of the lighthouse, and 
carried her anchor up into a pile of rocks. 
Then she eagerly ran to the little door. 

It was open and was banging back against 
the wall with every gust of the wind. 
In one corner of this lowest room stood a 
lighted lantern, burning very low. 

‘‘Caroline! Ned!” cried Sue-Betty up 
the winding stair. There was no answer 
out of the blackness above her. Sue-Betty 
took up the lantern and climbed the stairs. 

It was exactly like the lighthouse at 
Stony Point — except that it stood on a low 
island instead of on a high rocky point. The 
stairs were like it, the rooms were like it, 
one over the other, until she came to Ned 


62 


Pirates 


and Caroline’s sitting-room. That was very 
much like a cosy ship’s cabin, had a big 
stove with a fire in it, cupboards all around 
the walls between the small curtained 
windows, a few easy chairs, Caroline’s 
work-box on the table, Ned’s pipes and 
things on a shelf, and Caroline’s own little 
desk that had been sent after her from home, 
just a day or two before. On it was a photo- 
graph of Ned and of Sue-Betty herself, on 
the deck of the See-Saw, furling the sail. 

But Ned and Caroline were not there. 
Sue-Betty peeked into an adjoining little 
dressing-room, — not there either. 

“ They must have gone to the theatre,” 
said Sue-Betty with a sigh. 

She lit the student-lamp on Caroline’s 
desk, then took the matches and went climb- 
ing on up the winding stair to attend to the 
lighthouse lamps. 

She found them in sad condition. She had 
to bring up a can of sperm oil from ’way 
below, and fill the lamps. She had to trim 


Pirates 


63 

the wicks, she had to fetch chamois and 
clean cloths and rub the glasses and the 
brasses; but at last she had lit the lamps. 
Sue-Betty crept out upon the little circular 
balcony, to see through the glass her lamp 
burning so bright; but the wind blew hard 
and she soon crept in again. Deeply satis- 
fied with what she had done, she went down 
stairs. 

She would stay, anyhow, until Ned and 
Caroline came home. The warm and 
lighted room with eight corners was a very 
delightful place. Sue-Betty sat in Ned’s 
Morris chair, her bare legs curled up under 
her, and dreamed dreams of the day when 
she would have a lighthouse of her own. 
Hers should be on a wild, rocky reef, out of 
sight of land and other lights. The waves 
should lash and swish at its foot; she would 
have to get from her front door right into 
a rocking rowboat. She would tame the 
gulls and feed them. And sometimes she 
would drag in half-drowned sailors, and 


Pirates 


64 

warm them by her fire, and revive them. 
Then they vv^ould sit and smoke, and tell her 
exciting, creepy stories about other countries 
and sea-serpents in blue, tropical waters; 
and about how they had been chased by 
pirate vessels that sailed under black flags. 

There was a heavy, scrunchy step on the 
winding stair. Sue-Betty sat up alertly. 
Then up through the hole came a man, all 
dripping wet. Water ran from his big felt 
hat and the feather on it was draggled 
wet, water ran out of his clothes and 
off his boots; and when he stood in the 
middle of the room, it ran into pools on 
the floor. 

He was not only very wet, he was evi- 
dently very, very much provoked. He stood 
and glared at Sue-Betty with fierce black 
eyes, and made such an indignant snout of 
his mouth that his black moustache stuck 
up bristling, in a most unbecoming way. 
But his fierce expression was not the only 
alarming thing about him. He was darkly 



He Stood and Glared at Sue Betty with Fierce 
Black Eyes 



Pirates 


65 

tanned, and was dressed in an extraordinary 
fashion. Fancy! he had big gold rings in 
his brown ears, and wore a red sash, in 
which were stuck pistols and knives, only 
partly concealed under a short, round, richly 
embroidered velvet jacket. His boots had 
broad flaps that turned down. If he had not 
been so very wet, Sue-Betty would certainly 
have been frightened; but it seemed as if 
so much water must quench the fury of any 
man. So when he asked in a sharp way: 

Where is the lighthouse keeper?” Sue- 
Betty drew herself up and answered 
bravely: 

“ I am the lighthouse keeper, for to- 
night. What do you wish? ” 

“Will you please to look me over?” he 
cried indignantly. 

“I have,” said Sue-Betty. “You seem 
to have been in the water.” 

“In the water!” he roared furiously. 
“I’ve been to the bottom of the bay, and 
swallowed half of it, and all on account of 


66 Pirates 

the way you run this lighthouse, you 
shrimp ! ” 

It was Sue-Betty’s turn to be indignant 
now. 

‘‘You needn’t call names,” she cried. 
“ It’s not polite.” 

“And I say it’s a poor light that shines 
one night and not the next,” yelled her visi- 
tor, tramping around, beside himself with 
rage. And then he poured out a stream of 
Spanish. Sue-Betty was sure they were 
swear words, for she had once heard a par- 
rot, whom no one respected, talk just like 
that. 

“ My ship is stuck on the bar, at the end 
of this island, I tell you, — all because of 
your crazy lighthouse,” he continued, in 
English. “ And the pole I was shoving her 
off with, broke, I tell you, and I went flat 
into the water. What do you think of 
that?” 

He snatched his hat from his head and 
shook the water of it against the stove so 


Pirates 67 

that it hissed and went into steam. And 
now Sue-Betty saw that his head was 
wrapped in a red turban — picturesque, but 
not at all like a gentleman. 

“ She’ll stick there till the tide lifts her,” 
he roared, prancing around while the water 
oozed from his boots. ‘‘We shall lose a 
whole night’s work. Is this what you call 
running a lighthouse for the benefit of the 
public? I shall make you walk the plank 
— that is — Ah — I shall have you called up 
before the Board of Trustees.” 

“ If you have any complaint,” said Sue- 
Betty with dignity, “you are welcome to 
make it. Only you must make it properly, 
and I will register it.” 

She went to her sister’s desk, and looked 
at the backs of some big, businesslike-look- 
ing books. Sure enough, there was one 
labelled “ Complaints.” She opened it, and 
was relieved to find it all blank. Nothing 
had been entered yet. Ned and Caroline 
had luckily escaped so far. The pages were 


68 


Pirates 


divided into columns with headings: the 
first read — “Name;” the second — “Busi- 
ness or Profession;” the third was headed 
— “ Remarks and Observations.” 

The stranger seemed a little subdued 
when Sue-Betty opened the big book. He 
took a chair and put his feet on the stove 
and sat there, steaming all over and looking 
at her expectantly. 

“What is your name?” asked Sue-Betty, 
pen in hand. 

He jumped as if the stove had burned his 
shoe. He stood half up and looked at Sue- 
Betty in perfect surprise. 

“ What — do — you — want — of my name? ” 
he asked slowly. 

“ To send to the Government, with your 
complaint, of course,” returned Sue- 
Betty. 

“Oh!” said the stranger, and he pouted 
out his lips and bristled his moustache, not 
angrily this time, but very thoughtfully. 
Now he sat down and put up his legs, be- 


Pirates 69 

gan to steam again, and seemed lost in 
brooding thought. 

“What is your name?” said Sue-Betty 
again. 

“Willie Lamb,” he replied, with a cur- 
ious, side-long look. Sue-Betty thought it 
a very inappropriate name, but she wrote 
it into the book with a neat hand. 

“What is your business or profession?” 
she asked. 

“ I am a Sunday-school Superintendent in 
Yonkers,” he returned in a soft voice. Sue- 
Betty looked at him with surprise. He was 
regarding her out of the corners of his eyes, 
and he had a peculiar, crafty smile on his 
face. Very reluctantly she wrote him down 
a Sunday-school Superintendent. For Re- 
marks and Observations she asked him no 
question, but wrote down her own. This is 
her entry, just as she wrote it: 

“ Apeered late in the night, soking wet, 
with cumplaints agenst this lighthouse. 
Seems a suspishus caraktur.” 


70 


Pirates 


‘‘And now,” she said, using the blotter 
and closing the book, “ I am ready to hear 
your complaint.” 

Certainly his manner was very much 
changed since she had asked his name. He 
spoke in a quiet tone. 

“ My complaint is that your lighthouse 
is not at all reliable. It’s been dark for a 
whole week. To-night it’s lighted. This 
morning I’ve been taking the Sunday- 
school teachers of Yonkers for a little cruise 
on my pretty yacht, the F inkey -BluebelV* 
(when he gave this as the name of his ves- 
sel, his smile was very, very peculiar) , “ and 
the wind, coming home, drove us out of 
our course. ' When I saw this lighthouse 
lighted, I took it for quite another light- 
house, of course — one down the harbour, 
which hasn’t any sandbar near it. This 
lighthouse, as I say, has been dark a whole 
week. The first thing we knew the Black 
— I mean the Pinkey-Bluebell was stuck on 
the bar.” 


Pirates 


71 


He had finished, and Sue-Betty spoke. 

“Your complaint doesn’t count. If you 
had run on the bar last week, when it was 
dark, you might have got damages ; but it’s 
perfectly absurd to complain of a light- 
house because it is properly lighted.” 

“Absurd, is it?” cried Willie Lamb, los- 
ing his temper again. “ And I say it is ab- 
surd to have a light one week and none the 
next.” 

“You don’t understand about flash-lights, 
I see,” said Sue-Betty. (It was not fair, she 
knew, but how could she shield Ned and 
Caroline fairly?) “A great many light- 
houses don’t have a steady light. There’s 
a revolving cylinder, that works by clock- 
work, and it covers the light part of the 
time.” 

He snorted. 

“ I’ve been sailing up and down this coast 
for years and years and years,” he cried, 
“and I’ve sailed by more flash-lights than 
you ever heard of in all your little life; but 


Pirates 


72 

I never saw one that was dark for a whole 
week, and light for a whole week.” 

“Well,” said Sue-Betty, “if you don’t 
like it, you can speak to the Government.” 

She knew when she said it that all was 
over — that Ned and Caroline would lose 
their job. But when her flash-light excuse 
failed, she really could not think of another. 

“Have you a long distance telephone,” 
asked Willie Lamb, getting up energeti- 
cally. 

“No, you’ll have to go to the drug-store 
in New York,” said Sue-Betty. 

“How can I go in these clothes?” he 

cried. “ Everybody’ll know I’m a pi 1 

mean — that I’ve had a ducking.” 

“I might lend you some dry clothes,” 
said Sue-Betty, “ that belong to my brother- 
in-law. I think he would want to do some- 
thing for you, because you got wet on ac- 
count of the lights.” 

He looked pleased at the proposal, and 
Sue-Betty took him into the tiny dressing- 


Pirates 73 

room and laid out a suit of Ned’s clothes 
for him. She waited in the sitting-room 
but a little while before he came out, trans- 
formed. The gentlemanly clothes made 
him look far more as if his name might 
be William Lamb; though he had hardly 
the face of a Sunday-school Superinten- 
dent. 

“I’ll just hang these things up by the 
stove to dry, if you don’t mind,” he said, as 
he brought his own things out on his arm. 
Sue-Betty helped him spread them on the 
chair. 

“They’ll shrink like sixty,” muttered 
Willie Lamb. “Just turn them now and 
then, will you?” he asked Sue-Betty. 

Then he stamped away downstairs, only 
shouting back from below : 

“ I’ll be back about sunrise!” 

“ Mercy me I I can’t stay here till then I ” 
cried Sue-Betty, suddenly thinking of her 
mother in Clinton. She hurried down the 
winding staircase to catch him and explain 


74 


Pirates 


to him that she could not spend the rest of 
the night drying his clothes. 

It seemed a long way down the stairs; 
and when she stepped into the open door of 
the lighthouse tower and looked out, there 
was no Willie Lamb to be seen. Worse 
than that, there was no See-Saw to be seen, 
either. 

He’s taken my boat, without asking,” 
cried Sue-Betty indignantly. ^^Now I 
know he is a pirate!** 

She went slowly upstairs and sat down 
disconsolately to think over her predica- 
ment. The night was wearing away, and 
she was far from home. Morning would 
not find her in her little bed, and her mother 
would be frightened. 

The pirate’s clothes steamed and steamed, 
and grew drier and drier; and certainly, as 
he had said, they shrank like sixty. From 
time to time Sue-Betty turned them. At 
last she held up the shrunken coat and 
looked at it. 


Pirates 


75 

“It would about fit me!” she declared 
and put it on; it did nearly fit her; and 
whether or not there was some of a pirate’s 
dare-deviltry inhabiting his clothes, the 
minute she had his coat on, a splendid, wild 
idea came into her head. 

“ He took my boat,” she murmured. 
“ Why shouldn’t I take his boat — the 
P inkey -Bluebell? 

Even while she thought of it, she acted 
with that peculiar haste and energy that 
came to her when she was out at night. In 
a very few minutes she was dressed in the 
pirate’s clothes. The dry, hard boots rat- 
tled on her feet, the big hat came down far 
over her face — everything was a little loose; 
but she felt the disguise was perfect. 

She hurried downstairs and out, and made 
her way over rocks and sandy stretches to 
the far end of the lighthouse island. Sure 
enough, at the end of a long spit of sand, 
uncovered by the receding tide, lay the 
black hulk of a sailing vessel, fast on the 


Pirates 


76 

sand. Under its prow was a small fire of 
driftwood, around which were crouching 
several men; — pirates, every one of them, 
as Sue-Betty saw, when she drew near, by 
their wild costume and their dark, fierce 
faces. Moreover, the firelight shone on the 
name of the vessel, painted clearly on the 
bow — not Pinkey-Bluebell, oh, no! The 
pirate ship was not really the Pinkey-Blue- 
bell any more than the captain was really 
IWillie Lamb. In bold big letters was 
painted there: 

The Black Hag/' 

Striding hugely, Sue-Betty approached 
the men. They looked up, and cheered her 
hoarsely: 

“Hurrah! Hurrah for Captain Boabdil 
Calatrava Desayez! He’s all dry again!” 
they shouted. 

With a commanding gesture she pointed 
to the ship. 

“All aboard, boys! ” cried one big, black 
fellow, evidently the first mate. “ The Cap- 


Pirates 


77 

tain’s going to make another try to shove 
her off.” 

“That’s right! The tide’s come up since 
we last tried it,” shouted another. 

Someone on deck threw down a rope lad- 
der. The pirates stood back to let Sue- 
Betty go up first. She climbed nimbly up, 
stepped on deck and walked boldly up 
through a row of pirates to the bow, and 
climbed up on a coil of rope. When the 
men were all on board, the first mate joined 
her. 

“ You give the order,” Sue-Betty said to'^ 
him, in the hoarsest whisper she could make. 

“ I’ve caught cold from my ducking.” 

“What ho, my men!” shouted the mate, 
evidently greatly pleased to be in command. 

“ Our noble Captain Calatrava has tempo- 
rarily lost his voice from a cold. You are to 
obey 

And then he proceeded to give orders, 
and the crew went to work to make re- 
newed efforts at getting the ship afloat. 


Pirates 


78 

Sue-Betty sat up straight and dignified, 
as if watching the proceedings. In reality 
she was nerving herself to her adventure; 
for now that she really found herself the 
captain of a pirate ship (a thing that for 
years and years she had secretly hoped to 
be) she was a little nervous. The men 
seemed cheerfully obedient; but whenever 
a light flashed on one of their fierce faces, 
Sue-Betty felt a thrill to her boots. It was 
like having tigers lick your hands to have 
these fellows obeying you. 

She was startled from her musing by a 
great shouting — the ship was afloat. Now 
she whispered to her mate to head the Black 
Hag up the Sound, and began to pace back 
and forth across the bow. 

The stars were out, and the wind was 
changing. They tacked along with a brisk 
south wind, and Sue-Betty felt she was mak- 
ing good headway home. 

Her plan was this — to sail as far as Clin- 
ton, and there to pretend she wanted to go 


Pirates 


79 


ashore to bury some treasure (just as Cap- 
tain Kidd had buried treasure on that same 
coast, on Round Island, as is well known). 
Once on shore, she meant to slip away from 
the boat’s crew, throw off her disguise, and 
run home in her little bathing suit, quite 
unsuspected by all. 

The first mate approached her and 
saluted. 

Captain Calatrava, the prisoners in the 
hold are all calling together that they want 
to speak to you. Shall I tell them that if 
they aren’t quiet, they’ll all be smothered?” 

Sue-Betty was terribly startled, but she 
commanded herself. 

“No, I’ll tell them myself,” she whis- 
pered hoarsely. “You go ahead and ” 

She had almost said — “ and show me the 
way,” but checked herself in time. The 
mate led the way below, deep down into the 
hold. There, in the miserable light of one 
swinging lantern, Sue-Betty saw to her hor- 
ror six prisoners in chains, lying on the dirty 


8o 


Pirates 


bottom of the hold. They seemed very nice 
people, two ladies and three gentlemen and 
one little boy in a sailor suit. And they 
were all groaning. 

“ Here, you,” cried the mate in a horrid, 
rude voice, “ here’s our noble captain Boab- 
dil Calatrava Desayez, come to tell you, if 
he hadn’t lost his voice temporarily, that if 
you don’t stop complaining, you shan’t have 
the pleasure of walking the plank to-mor- 
row, but all be smothered to-night.” 

“ Go up and attend to your watch,” Sue- 
Betty whispered. “You’ll be missed on 
deck.” 

The mate withdrew, rather reluctantly. 
He seemed to love to bully the prisoners. 
Sue-Betty took down the lantern and a 
bunch of keys that hung under it; and going 
rapidly from one to the other of the prison- 
ers, she knelt and unlocked their chains, bid- 
ding them keep perfectly silent, and she 
would free them all. 

They were all terribly excited, but they 


Pirates 


8 1 


obeyed Sue-Betty, remained quiet, and gath- 
ered about her eagerly to hear how they 
were to escape. 

“Try if you can open that port-hole,” 
said Sue-Betty in a whisper to one of the 
gentlemen. He tried, and did. 

“Now I’ll go up and throw down to you 
six life-preservers,” said Sue-Betty. “You’ll 
put them on, and all get out into the water 
and swim away.” 

The ladies were frightened at the idea of 
it, but their husbands could swim and reas- 
sured them. 

“ On the next tack we’ll go near shore and 
then you get out,” whispered Sue-Betty, and 
she left them. 

She found the life-preservers in the fore- 
castle under the pirates’ berths. Some of 
the men lay snoring in their bunks. No one 
saw what the Captain was doing. 

She threw them down the hatchway, and 
then went forward again and stood in the 
bow. On the next tack, when they were 


82 


Pirates 


nearer shore, she began to watch. She saw 
nothing till the Black Hag came about, and 
then she observed six black spots on the 
water off the stern, and she knew the cap- 
tives were free. 

‘‘Where are we now?” she whispered to 
the mate, after a while. 

“Nearly off the mouth of the river, at 
Clinton. We ought to make it in five tacks 
more. I suppose we’ll go up the river a 
ways?” 

“Yes, I want to land on the flats,” whis- 
pered Sue-Betty. 

“ There’s a funny little cat-boat, that 
seems to be pursuing us,” observed the mate, 
casually. “ She’s been cutting across our 
tack ever since we left New York, and just 
now she’s gaining. Queer idea, ain’t it? Of 
course, whoever’s in her hasn’t any idea 
we’re pirates. There she is again. See her 
off there, right abeam of us?” 

Far over the starlit water Sue-Betty saw 
the black hull and white sail of the See- 


Pirates 


83 

Saw. She was terribly startled, for, of 
course she knew the real Boabdil Calatrava 
Desayez was in pursuit of her. 

She’s a clipping little craft, a regular 
racer, too,” said the mate with admiration. 
‘‘She’s gaining on us steady. How’d it be 
to run her down and capture her? Handy 
little thing to have in tow.” 

Sue-Betty energetically forbade it; de- 
clared she must get to Clinton and could 
waste no time. Inwardly she trembled with 
fright. If the pirate captain ever got near 
enough to make himself known to his crew, 
what would become of her? 

She stood in dreadful anxiety, leaning 
over the rail, hoping and hoping that the 
Black Hag could outsail the See-Saw — a 
thing she never could have hoped under 
any other circumstances in the world. 

Alas, it was true, what Ned had said so 
often — the See-Saw could outsail anything 
on the Sound. And Boabdil Calatrava evi- 
dently knew how to sail her. On the next 


Pirates 


84 

tack, he crossed the Black Hag^s bows — and 
with a megaphone voice he called to his 
pirate crew in Spanish. 

Instantly there was an uproar on deck. 
All eyes were turned to the bow where Sue- 
Betty stood, and menacing arms were raised 
against her; but the mate commanded them 
to wait until Boabdil came on board; and 
though the wild cries against Sue-Betty still 
continued, and though the worst of the 
pirates stood not ten feet away, brandish- 
ing cutlasses and making fearful faces, no 
one ventured to disobey the mate. Mean- 
while the See-Saw came alongside, and in 
another minute Boabdil Calatrava Desayez 
stood on his own deck again. He was 
greeted with cheers by his men, though he 
still wore Ned’s clothes; and they begged 
his permission to cut Sue-Betty into little 
pieces with their cutlasses. 

“ No, she shall walk the plank,” he cried 
in a thundering voice. 

When Sue-Betty heard that, she was 


Pirates 


85 

filled with hope, for the wind was rapidly 
carrying the vessel towards the Clinton 
shore. While the pirates hastily brought 
forth a long plank and stuck it out over the 
water, she as hastily threw off the captain’s 
clothes and stood in her little bathing-suit 
on the bow. 

“ Now come on,” thundered the pirate 
captain, and all his crew yelled : Come on 
and walk the plank!” 

Sue-Betty felt just as if she were going 
to do a circus thing. Without a particle of 
fear she came hopping down the deck, 
skipped up between the two long rows of 
pirates, and, light as a feather, ran out to 
the end of the long plank over the black 
water. Then she gave a little jump to set 
the plank swinging, then a big one into the 
air, turned a clear somersault, and shot 
down into the cool water of the Sound. It 
was a thing she had never done before in 
her life, but often thought she could do — 
and that night it was easy. And now she 


86 


Pirates 


swam away under water, like a little frog. 
When she came up, she was close in shore. 
She could see the Black Hag against the 
sky, but the pirates could not see her, she 
was so little, and it was so dark. 

“They think I’m drowned, of course,” 
she giggled, as she waded up upon the 
beach. 

A few minutes later she was dry and 
warm in her bed. Her mother found her 
fast asleep there at getting-up time. Sue- 
Betty felt, when she waked, as if she had 
only been asleep a minute ; yet it must have 
been rather early in the night when she came 
in, for her bathing suit was quite dry. 


THE WHITE NIGHT 


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THE WHITE NIGHT 


S U E-BETTY was in town — and when 
you are in town, even a snowstorm is 
not very much fun. She had been upstairs 
in the library bay window, and she had been 
downstairs in the servant’s sitting-room, 
flattening and cooling her nose against the 
window-glass; but there was nothing much 
to see. Same old square, where the trees 
were growing white, same old iron railing, 
every rod with a night-cap that kept grow- 
ing taller and taller as evening fell! — Sue- 
Betty wished herself at home. 

But something exciting nearly always 
happens. Grown-ups are strange people, 
and what they say and do (if one will only 
watch them) is almost sure to have some- 
thing new in it. While Sue-Betty was rub- 
bing her nose, which had grown a little 


90 


The White Night 

cooler than she wanted it, she overheard her 
Aunt Marian consulting with the cook. 

It seemed there was going to be a ladies’ 
luncheon party the next day, in honour of 
Sue-Betty’s mother, and the cook was tell- 
ing all the things she was going to make — 
things that sounded as if they might be very 
hard to make, but would certainly taste de- 
licious. Naturally, Sue-Betty listened. 
Presently the cook said : 

‘‘And please Ma’m, Pisani’s have sent 
word, and they say they can’t let us have 
any mousse in time to-morrow. Shall I send 
for something else?” 

“Nothing will take the^ place of the 
mousse/^ said Sue-Betty’s aunt decidedly. 
“ If Pisani can’t send it, we must get it 
somewhere else. Let James go out at once, 
and try to find some.” 

Sue-Betty was in a flutter. She hung 
about the back hall after that, eagerly wait- 
ing for James. Presently he came up from 
the basement with his overcoat on. James 


91 


The White Night 

was the coachman, a big, grey-haired man. 
He was a fine driver; but he was not at all 
proud, except when he was driving, and he 
and the little girl were friends. When she 
stood before him now, with eager, upturned 
face, he stopped and asked: Well?” 

James, are you going moose hunting? ” 
gasped Sue-Betty, clasping her hands to- 
gether. 

James grinned. 

^‘That’s exactly what I am,” he said. 
“Who told you?” 

“Oh, take me along,” cried Sue-Betty. 
“ IVe always heard about it — IVe always 
hoped to go some day.” 

Then James opened his wide mouth and 
laughed aloud. 

“You?” he said. “My, you couldn’t 
handle no gun. Besides, I’m going through 
snow deeper’n your head. You’d be lost.” 
And he opened the door that led out into 
the side street. 

“But I could wear snowshoes,” pro- 


92 


The White Night 

tested Sue-Betty, clinging to his arm. 
‘‘There are some in Uncle’s room upstairs 
hanging on the wall. Please, please, James, 
take me along.” 

“No, no,” said James, still highly 
amused. “ Them moose is awful dangerous 
animals. They rises on their hind legs like 
this ; and they puts their front hoofs together 
like that; and they comes down onto you, 
so” — ^James made the appropriate motions 
— “ and there you are, nailed down to the 
ground under ten foot of snow, and you 
don’t get found till spring. No, no, moose 
hunting ain’t for little girls;” and still 
chuckling, he went out and closed the door. 

Sue-Betty did not dine with the grown 
people, but had her tea alone, and was put 
early to bed, earlier than at home; so she 
had plenty of time to think over this sub- 
ject of moose hunting. She felt, sadly, that 
she had just missed a very unusual oppor- 
tunity. Ned, her brother-in-law, had told 
lier about the sport — about the vast forests. 


93 


The White Night 

filled with snow, and the little cabin camps 
beneath tall trees where the hunters rested 
and slept. In Ned’s party there had always 
been several hunters. 

James had gone alone. 

If you know anything about Sue-Betty, 
you will know that she is a little girl famous 
for getting worried. She was now lying 
awake, thinking up things that might hap- 
pen to James, because he had gone alone. 
Sue-Betty could not believe the moose were 
so dangerous as he had painted them; but 
the trackless forest (for a man without 
snowshoes) was another matter. 

She tossed about, and tossed about, for a 
long time. After awhile a plan came to 
her, and she lay still to think it over care- 
fully. 

Sue-Betty’s aunt and uncle and mother 
were gone out that night. The maids were 
in the back of the house, the front part was 
all lighted and very still. No one saw Sue- 
Betty come downstairs, dressed all in 


94 


The White Night 

furs, with the snowshoes from her uncle’s 
room under her arm, and, in the belt of her 
coat, two weapons she had taken from the 
wall in the same place. One was a small 
dagger, with a pretty carved ivory handle, 
the other a long-barrelled pistol, with a 
rather antiquated lock. No one saw her 
slip out of the front door and into the street. 

Sue-Betty was going after James. 

It had stopped snowing. The square lay 
white and still under the bright arc lamps, 
the street was empty of passers-by. With 
exultant heart, Sue-Betty put her snowshoes 
down, placed her feet carefully under the 
deerskin thongs, and essayed her first 
steps. 

It went beautifully. She did not trip or 
fall. Slowly and cautiously, at first, she 
trailed across the street; but when she 
mounted the drifts that covered the square, 
and found the new foot-gear so manage- 
able, she pressed forward more boldly; and 
now she was skimming along as gaily as you 


The White Night 95 

please, bound for the park and the open 
country beyond. 

She had never a doubt as to which direc- 
tion James had taken. A few days before, 
on a sleighride, he had pointed out the for- 
ests to the east of town, where, he said, grew 
all the Christmas trees — that was the like- 
liest place for moose of any near the town, 
thought the little girl. 

If some watching policeman, or any per- 
son looking from a window upon the park, 
happened to see Sue-Betty as she passed, 
there was no good calling to her, nor run- 
ning after her, for by this time she was 
skimming along like the wind. For some 
reason, though the air was icy, she felt 
strong and warm and lively, as never in her 
life; and so safe above the deep snow, and 
so mightily armed against the moose, that 
she was ready to sing. 

It was quick work to reach the open coun- 
try; and oh, how it had snowed! In town 
there had been no such drifts as here filled 


g6 The White Night 

roads and covered fences. After she had 
left the last electric lights, Sue-Betty easily 
found her way by the soft gleam of the mil- 
lions and millions of stars. She directed 
her course by the pole star (where the Great 
Bear pointed it), as travellers should, keep- 
ing it over her left shoulder and facing 
steadily eastward. 

Soon she came to the forest, of course; 
and among the first tree-stems she halted, to 
give James a signal. There was a certain 
way of whistling on one’s fingers, that boys 
had, which Sue-Betty had always envied. 
Somehow, this was her successful night. 
She slipped off her right mitten, put her 
two fingers in her mouth, and blew such 
a whoop of a whistle as nearly frightened 
herself. 

Then she listened. 

Far, far away in the depths of the white, 
dim forest, there was a curious noise— a 
snorting noise — something like the excited 
whinny of a horse, mixed with the growling 


The White Night 97 

of a bear, with a dash in it of the howling 
of a wolf. 

Mercy me I” said Sue-Betty. That 

can^t be James. It must be a moose.” 

She took out her long-barrelled pistol and 
flourished it. 

“ If he should come now, and rise up on 
his hind legs to nail me down, wouldn’t I 
nail him! ” she declared boldly. 

Sure, now that she had heard the moose, 
that she was on the right track, and eager to 
find James, she shot away among the trees. 

The forest was very white. Long hemlock 
branches came swaying down, laden heavily 
with snow and making windows for the 
starlight. The waving snow floor glittered 
and gleamed. All was quiet as sleep, ex- 
cept the swift little figure of Sue-Betty that 
shot away among the tree stems like a fleet- 
ing dream. If a cone dropped in all that 
solitude, it fell noiselessly into feathery 
snow; if there was a live owl in one of those 
great trees, it kept frozenly, sullenly still. 


98 The White Night 

And so, though she moved swiftly, Sue-Betty 
could listen; and from time to time, through 
that great hush of snow, she heard the wild 
cry of the moose. 

Suddenly a long, yellow ray of light fell 
across her way. Turning aside, Sue-Betty 
recognised a small, snow-covered cabin, 
under a mighty tree. 

She hastened up to it — the light came 
through the chinks — and pushed open the 
door. 

There sat James by the fire, just as she 
had expected. He was smoking his short 
pipe and looked very sleepy. His gun 
was on the floor beside him — and no sign 
whatever of any moose meat. He started a 
good deal when Sue-Betty burst in upon 
him; but when he saw who it was, he was 
ready with his usual grin of pleasure. 

‘‘So you’re sitting here, James?” said 
Sue-Betty. 

“ Yes, I’m sittin’ here. Where else should 
I be sittin’?” said James. “ There ain’t so 


The White Night 99 

much accommodation around these here 
woods.” 

But the moose is at the door,” cried Sue- 
Betty with a dramatic gesture. At this 
James appeared thoroughly alarmed. “I 
mean it’s up there,” she corrected herself, 

pretty near. I’ve been hearing it.” 

“ Oh, Fve been hearing of it, and seeing 
of it, too, when it comes to that,” said James. 

‘‘Well, why didn’t you hunt it?” de- 
manded Sue-Betty. “ Isn’t that what you 
came out for? ” 

“ It’s what I came out for,” admitted 
James. “ And when you came in, I was just 
thinking about getting ready to start out to 
begin to hunt it — just when you came in. 
I’ve no objection,” he added emphatically, 
“ to your going along.” 

“ Oh, James, thank you, thank you,” cried 
the little girl delightedly, and she clasped 
the handle of her pistol. 

“What sort of a shooting iron is that?” 
asked James dubiously. 


lOO 


The White Night 

“ It’s a good kind, the kind Arabs use,” 
Sue-Betty explained as she proudly showed 
it. “ I chose it out of all Uncle James’s col- 
lection.” 

You did? ” said James ; but he wouldn’t 
admire the weapon. ‘‘ It looks dangerous 
enough,” he grumbled. ‘‘ The only ques- 
tion is whether them critters is at all sensi- 
tive to appearances.” 

“ Look at my snowshoes,” said Sue-Betty 
triumphantly. ‘‘ I can walk on them per- 
fectly.” 

That won’t help you,” said J ames. ‘‘ The 
question is whether you can run on them. 
Walking won’t do you any good if the 
moose sees us.” 

“ I believe I can walk faster than you can 
run,” ventured Sue-Betty. 

“ You haven’t seen any running, child, 
till you’ve seen me run. when the moose sees 
us,” returned James patronisingly. 

Sue-Betty looked at him with profound 
admiration. 


The White Night loi 

“ You’ll chase him up hill and down dale, 
for miles and miles, and hours and hours, 
won’t you?” she said with a happy sigh. 

That’s what I’ve always heard one has to 
do.” 

^‘Yes, that’s what one hears,” returned 
J ames. He seemed very gloomy and absent- 
minded. 

What are we waiting for? ” asked Sue- 
Betty after a pause. 

James sighed for all reply. Then he went 
to the hearth and knocked the ashes from 
his pipe and took up his gun. Sue-Betty 
would have liked to see him move with more 
cheerful alacrity; but she reflected that 
James must have hunted moose so long that 
the sport had lost the relish of novelty. 

Conversation was difficult as they walked, 
for James went deep into the snow at every 
step, grumbling and growling all the while. 

“ The horse-power it takes to get through 
this here would run a freight train a thou- 
sand miles,” said he. 


102 


The White Night 

^‘Was it one moose you saw, James, or 
was it a whole herd? ” Sue-Betty asked. 

“Twas one,” said James, “but a thun- 
derin’ big one.” 

“ It’ll be easy to hit,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Yes, if you care to get within range,” 
said James, darkly. 

“ You think they’re so dangerous? ” asked 
the little girl. 

“ Dangerous ! ” echoed J ames. “ Are 
cyclones and menagerie tigers and railroad 
accidents and automobiles dangerous? ” 

“Are their hides so very thick? Won’t 
bullets go through?” asked Sue-Betty a 
little anxiously. 

“Well,” said James, “ if you can get close 
enough, and hit the critter in the right spot, 
bullets ought to penetrate; but if they 
don’t it won’t matter — ^you won’t live to 
regret it.” 

As they talked, that strange wild cry grew 
louder and then ceased altogether. At the 
same time the woods began to grow lighter. 


103 


The White Night 

and presently Sue-Betty glimpsed the great 
full moon, rising between the trees. She 
thought it a happy advantage in the hunt; 
but James, plodding laboriously through 
the snow, refused to take a cheerful view 
of anything. He thought the cover of dark- 
ness more desirable than the brightening 
moonlight. They were still arguing about 
this when they came suddenly upon the 
moose itself. 

To speak more exactly, they came upon 
the creature’s huge hind legs; for its head 
and fore parts were buried deep in the snow. 
Sue-Betty stopped and gasped. She had 
not expected it would be so large. 

‘‘This is a good first view to get of it, 
very,” observed James. “ When I first saw 
it, it was chawing off a tree — and I saw too 
much of it at once. Now it’s peacefully 
pasturing off the moss under the snow, that’s 
what it’s doing of now.” 

“James,” whispered Sue-Betty, noting 
the black, scrawny, lank hind legs of the 


104 "The White Night 

creature, “ do you suppose it really is so very 
good to eat? ” 

“ Well, it wouldn’t be my taste,” said 
James; ‘‘but ladies has their fancies.” 

They approached cautiously. By the 
clearer light Sue-Betty saw that all the trees 
about had had their bark gnawed off to a 
great height; that gave her a good idea of 
the moose’s size. As to its strength, it moved 
along through the drifts like a powerful 
snow-plow. Its great legs trampled a 
wide path, its short tail vibrated in the 
air. 

“ Shall we shoot from here? ” asked Sue- 
Betty. 

“ That would be the quickest way to the 
Golden Shore,” said James solemnly. “ We 
couldn’t more than pepper them leather- 
covered legs of his, and he’d leave that 
there moss in a hurry, for the pleasure of 
makin’ us into hash. The only place to hit 
a moose is right between the eyes.” 

“Come on, then!” said Sue-Betty ex- 


The White Night 105 

citedly. Let’s get him right in front of 
us when he comes up.” 

But James rather hung back. 

“ If we get him right in front of us,” he 
argued, “don’t you see, that he’d have us 
right in front of him? That would be an 
undesirable position for us — very.” 

Sue-Betty felt a little disgusted with 
J ames. 

“ I see you are no hunter,” she remarked. 

“ Well, I was hired for a coachman,” 
he returned sulkily. “ You can’t get a Buf- 
falo Bill for sixty dollars a month.” 

Sue-Betty could not understand him; for 
her part, she felt no fear whatever. She 
drew out her Arab horse-pistol, cocked 
it, and strode away to head off the moose, 
calling to James to follow. 

She had hardly reached her vantage- 
point, when the moose began to show signs 
of emerging from the drift, trampling back- 
wards and shaking itself violently. 

“Now, James, when I say fire !” 


io6 The White Night 

cried Sue-Betty, looking for her companion. 
To her amazement he was nowhere near 
her. Away back where she had come from, 
she saw him; and he — oh, shame! — he was 
rapidly climbing a large tree. 

‘‘ All the more glory for me,” thought 
Sue-Betty. 

But the moose, now lifting its great head 
from the snow, proved to be so terrific, that 
Sue-Betty was almost alarmed. She re- 
membered in her school-reader the sentence : 
“ The moose, when pursued, trots off 
with great rapidity.” But this monster 
made no sign of trotting off. The instant it 
caught sight of the little girl, it came charg- 
ing along towards her through the snow. 

Sue-Betty raised her pistol and, aiming 
between the two fiery eyes, she blazed away; 
it went off with the report of a cannon, but 
with no effect on the moose. Could it be 
that the Arab pistol was only loaded with a 
cap? The moose came bounding on. Its 
broad flat horns, its long quivering snout. 


107 


The White Night 

its great shaggy ears and the coarse, long 
black beard under its chin made it the most 
fearful face that Sue-Betty had ever seen 
in all her dreams ; and as it plunged nearer, 
she wished herself up the tree with James. 

Dodge him! Dodge him!” bellowed 
James from afar. But poor Sue-Betty did 
not know how to dodge on snowshoes, and 
stood helplessly still. 

On came the moose, and when it reached 
her it rose, just as she expected, a great dark 
body over her, hoofs together, ready to nail 
her to the ground; but its great hind legs 
made an arch before her, a gate of escape 
out of the danger, and fleet as the wind on 
her snowshoes, Sue-Betty shot through. 

Fortune seemed to favour her. A tree had 
fallen against another, making a bridge 
slanting upward; Sue-Betty went skimming 
up this perilous path in safety, and in an- 
other minute was among the branches of a 
tall pine. 

She turned, and saw the moose turn also. 


io8 The White Night 

The animal glared about for a moment, 
caught sight of her then, and viciously low- 
ering its great horned head, it charged 
the stem of the tree in which she was 
clinging. 

It butted squarely, there was a fearful 
crash, and Sue-Betty came tumbling down. 

She did not fall far. 

She landed right on the moose’s back, 
clutched fast at its horns, and got herself 
safely astride of it. The creature bounded 
and bucked to get her off, and she hung on 
for dear life ; and James shouted to her from 
the distance in a trumpet voice : 

Sit down to your seat,** he roared, “ SIT 
DOWN TO YOUR SEAT! Curve your sit- 
ting bones under you! Let him have his 
head!’^ 

She tried to obey; and the frightened 
moose gave up trying to buck her off and 
decided to run : They were off like a rush 
of wind. As they passed hard by the tree 
where James was clinging, Sue-Betty heard 







They Were Off like a Rush of Wind 








The White Night 109 

him shout, by way of last advice: 
down to the gallop! 

Then she was out of earshot 
The moose, when pursued, trots off with 
great rapidity.” But the moose, when 
mounted, dashes off at a pace which the 
books have not yet described. Sue-Betty 
drew about three long breaths to the mile, 
and the night wind whistled past her ears 
like bullets. They left the forest and crossed 
white moonlit fields and entered the woods 
again, like the winking of an eye. Now they 
were on a great bare hill, now they were 
leaping a frozen brook in the bottom of a 
valley, now they flashed past lighted farms, 
now they flew across great deserted snow- 
covered plains. The moose seemed to have 
no idea but to cover the ground. It went 
at a long swinging gallop, without shying, 
and Sue-Betty had no trouble now to stick 
on. 

But think of her anxiety as to where she 
was going! 


no 


The White Night 

In some ways the ride was unusually in- 
teresting. The moon was well up now and 
very bright, and Sue-Betty could not but 
notice that she was passing through a coun- 
try different from any she had ever seen 
(except in frost pictures on window-panes, 
early in the morning). The forests were 
ferny, frosted, delicate, like lace, and such 
club-moss trees prevailed as in ancient days 
were turned to coal ; everything shimmering 
white, as if done in silver and glass and 
crystal and white porcelain. And everything 
crackled and snapped off sharply as they 
brushed past, and crashed down in a shower 
of diamonds behind them, and fell noise- 
lessly into the feathery snow. Once, glanc- 
ing up the silvery moonlit aisle of this fairy- 
like forest, Sue-Betty saw a white fox on his 
hind legs, stretching up a tree ; but she was 
a mile away before she could look to see 
what he was stretching for. 

“ If I could only steer this beast,” thought 
poor Sue-Betty; for she dreaded being car- 


Ill 


The White Night 

ried to the very polar regions, and perish- 
ing there in a world of ice; and then, as 
usual on such night adventures, a practical 
thought came to her aid. 

She drew the little ivory-handled dagger 
from her belt, and tried the effect of prick- 
ing the moose lightly on the left side of the 
neck. 

He promptly veered to the right. 

She pricked it on the right; it turned to 
the left. 

Why, it’s a perfectly good saddle-horse! 
cried Sue-Betty with delight; and she made 
up her mind, then and there, that this moose 
should never be cut into steaks and chops, 
for any grown-ups’ luncheon. She would 
take it home, she would indeed, and tame 
it, and keep it for her own. And the next 
time the little girls at school talked about 
their goat-carts, and donkeys, and ponies, 
she, Sue-Betty, would casually speak of her 
new saddle-moose. 

She guided her flying steed up the slope 


II2 


The White Night 

of a big bare hill, and though it flew over 
the top, and went pell-mell down the other 
side, Sue-Betty was up there long enough to 
catch sight of the lights of the city, ever so 
far away. She noted what stars it was 
under (as travellers should) and after that 
kept her steed in a straight course for home 
by repeated pricks with that invaluable little 
dagger. 

By the time they had reached the out- 
skirts of the town, the moose was beginning 
to show signs of weariness. Its speed abated. 
It went through the park at rather a lame 
lope ; it came into the quiet city streets at a 
jog-trot; and by the time they had reached 
the square where Sue-Betty’s aunt and uncle 
lived, it lapsed into a walk. 

‘‘ Dear me, it will be lying down next and 
rolling over,” thought Sue-Betty, and she 
used her dagger for a spur, and brought her 
steed at a sharp trot down the side street to 
her uncle’s stable. 


II3 


The White Night 

There stood James, just where he always 
stood when Sue-Betty’s uncle brought the 
horses home. He flung open the stable 
door and let the moose and rider enter the 
carriage house. 

‘^You got home first, James,” observed 
Sue-Betty, with great surprise. 

“ Well, and what if I hadn’t,” he said in a 
growly tone. ‘‘ Who was to put up this here 
beast, I’d like to know? ” 

By the light of the lanterns he put a halter 
on the moose and fastened it to the two 
swinging tie-straps. Then he came and 
helped Sue-Betty down. Oh, but she was 
stiff! 

‘‘ What kind of riding-boots is these, for 
a young lady? ” he inquired, with strong 
disapproval, as Sue-Betty kicked and pulled 
off her snowshoes. 

You know very well I didn’t have time 
to change,” cried Sue-Betty reproachfully. 

If people can’t dress proper for it, they 
ought not to ride at all,” said James inex- 


1 14 The White Night 

orably. “ And what sort of shape is this to 
bring an animal into the stable?” he con- 
tinued still more severely, holding up a 
lantern to the moose’s steaming flank. ‘‘ The 
critter’s pretty nigh foundered. See it 
heave? You can’t use him to-morrow, nor 
yet the day after, not if I have my say about 
it.” 

Sue-Betty was very much crestfallen. 
She knew that in everything pertaining to 
the stable, James always did have his say; 
and though she felt it was hardly her fault 
that the moose was in such a lather, she did 
not believe James was in a mood to accept 
any excuses. Grumbling and muttering all 
the while, he fetched his curry combs and 
brushes and cloths and gave the moose a 
thorough rubbing down. Sue-Betty humbly 
held the lantern. 

“ Never saw a beast in such a fix! It’ll be 
an hour before it’s safe to water him. This 
is what you’ve got to expect when you let 
children ride out alone,” growled James. 


The White Night 115 

He groomed and he groomed, and Sue- 
Betty held the lantern, aggrieved at the way 
she had been received, yet afraid to speak 
her mind, with James in such a humour. He 
was such a very different person here, on 
his own ground, from what he had been out 
in the woods. At last she ventured timidly: 

“James, we won’t have it killed for the 
luncheon, will we? I want to keep it to 
ride.” 

“Not if I have my say,” said James. 

“About which?” asked the little girl 
anxiously, “ about the killing or the riding.” 

“ He won’t be eaten, nor yet he won’t be 
ridden,” said James firmly. “This here 
moose is in my care, and in my care he’ll 

And James groomed away assiduously, 
and refused to say another word. 

After awhile Sue-Betty got so sleepy, she 
could not hold the lantern any longer. She 
put it down, and crept away to the hay-mow, 
and went fast asleep. 

And she did not wake up again till next 


ii6 The White Night 

morning, and found herself in her own bed. 
James must have carried her home, and 
Olga must have undressed her. Before she 
had her breakfast, she went anxiously to the 
kitchen to ask about the moose. To her 
immense relief, she heard that Pisani was 
going to send some after all. Then she went 
to the stable telephone, and called up James. 
He was evidently stupid from having lost 
so much sleep, for it was hard to make him 
understand what she wanted to know; but 
when he did understand, he guffawed loudly 
through the telephone, and said that the 
moose had kicked so much in the night, he 
had feared it would kick the stable down, 
so he had turned it out at daybreak. 

When Sue-Betty hung up the receiver, she 
was ready to cry. It was moose, and 
she had wanted to keep it. 

“ But I could never have ridden again,” 
she comforted herself, not if James had 
had his say; and he always does, about every- 
thing in the stable.” 


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THE FISH PICTURE 




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THE FISH PICTURE 



HE postman came while the family 


A were still at the breakfast table and 
Sue-Betty brought in the mail. 

A nice, big, fat envelope for you. 
Cousin Frank,” she called to her grown-up 
cousin. She thought he would be pleased ; 
but he only looked annoyed when he 
took it. 

“This is my famous article, come back 
for the seventh time,” he said to Sue-Betty’s 
mother, making his mouth smile. “ I won’t 
try again.” 

“ Oh yes, you must try again, Frank,” she 
answered. “ I am sure there are some more 
likely magazines. If you would only go 
and see the editor personally ” 

“ I say, Frank,” put in Sue-Betty’s father, 
looking up from his mail, “ why don’t you 


120 


The Fish Picture 


try your manuscript on the editor of the 
powder magazine ? ” 

But Cousin Frank did not answer. He 
got up, took his mail, and went out. Sue- 
Betty’s eyes followed him as he passed 
through the library, and she saw him 
angrily chuck the big, fat envelope into the 
waste-paper basket. 

“ What is it? ” she asked her mother, in 
a whisper — for her father was reading 
again. 

Something he has written, dear — no, 
not a story. It’s about Government. You 
would not even understand the title, little 
girl.” 

‘‘And won’t anybody print it? Asked 
Sue-Betty. 

“ Oh yes, surely. Some magazine will be 
found,” said her mother. “ It is a very 
clever article, and took him a long time to 
write. It’s hard to find the right editor, 
sometimes — and so he is a little discouraged. 
But he’ll try again.” 


The Fish Picture 121 

Sue-Betty did not tell her mother the 
manuscript was thrown away. She slipped 
into the library, rescued it from the basket, 
carried it to her room and hid it in her bed. 
Later, she thought, when Frank had grown 
sorry and had begun to look through the 
paper barrels in the cellar and question the 
girls, she would bring it out and joyfully 
surprise him. 

It was a rule in those hot summer days 
that Sue-Betty was to take a nap every after- 
noon ; that is to say, she had to lie down two 
hours every day and try to sleep. “ Don’t 
think about anything at that time,” her 
mother would say. It is thinking of too 
many things all day that makes my little girl 
so skinny-thin.” Well, one can’t help think- 
ing; and if one lies right on top of a bump 
of manuscript, hid under the spread, one 
naturally thinks of that. 

Why should Frank refuse to try the editor 
of the Powder Magazine? Sue-Betty won- 
dered and wondered. It was so near by. 


122 


The Fish Picture 


You only had to go half a mile, about, along 
the East Plank road, and turn towards town, 
and there you saw the building of the pow- 
der magazine in a grove of trees. Sue-Betty 
had often driven by there. 

But Frank is very obstinate,” said Sue- 
Betty to herself. If he says he won’t, why 
he just won’t. And it is such a pity! All 
that work of writing it! And it’s clever, 
mother says. What a pity! What a pity! ” 

Suddenly a happy idea came into her head 
and she eagerly sat up and looked at the 
clock. No, it was not time to get up yet — 
not for an hour. She sighed and lay down. 
She rooted the manuscript out from under 
herself, and lay with it clasped in her 
arms. 

“Oh, an hour is so long!” she sighed. 
“ I wish I were fat: then I wouldn’t have 
to take naps.” 

She waited and waited. Time crawled 
along. 

“Why, dear me!” exclaimed Sue-Betty, 


The Fish Picture 123 

suddenly. Some offices close at four, Fll 
have to finish my nap later.” 

She was up as she spoke, slipped on her 
shoes in a hurry, and, without stopping to 
put on her hat, she scampered downstairs 
and out of the house. Cousin Frank’s manu- 
script under her arm. 

She was off for the Powder Magazine, to 
see the editor personally. 

It was rather a gloomy bit of road, where 
the building stood, far back from the high 
picket fence, and screened by trees. There 
were several signs of no trespassing” 
on the fence; and on the first gate she 
came to was hung a sign: “Author’s 
entrance.” 

“ I’m not an author,” said Sue-Betty, 
and looked further; but she had to come 
back, for the only other gate she could find 
was marked, “ For the Editor only,” so she 
went in by the author’s way. 

There was a boardwalk that wound about 
and wound about through the thick grove, 


124 The Fish Picture 

instead of leading directly to the building. 
Sue-Betty grew a little tired trotting around 
these senseless curves; but an occasional 
finger post with the legend Authors this 
way! ” assured her she was on the right path 
even when she lost sight of the building 
itself. Presently she came to a hedge and a 
gateway marked “ for Authors.’’ Sue-Betty 
went through and up a bit of lane ; and there 
she found herself, to her amazement, out on 
the road again, not ten feet from where she 
had started in. 

‘‘Well!” she gasped. “It would have 
been a little politer, I think, to say ‘ Authors 
not admitted.’ ” 

But she was not going to be balked of her 
purpose. This time she went resolutely to 
the entrance for the editor. Here the board- 
walk led towards the main building straight 
as an arrow, and Sue-Betty started up it; 
but coming to meet her was a tall man with 
eyeglasses. He had a parcel under one arm, 
and on the other he carried a black cloth 


The Fish Picture 


125 

bag, drawn up with cords. He stopped and 
Sue-Betty had to stop. 

“ You’re on the wrong walk, little girl,” 
he said, rather severely. 

“ I know, — but the other one is no good, 
and I want to see the editor,” Sue-Betty 
explained. 

“ Oh, you do, do you? ” said the tall man. 
He wrinkled his nose so that his glasses fell 
off, and put on another pair, and looked Sue- 
Betty over from head to foot; so that she 
knew perfectly well that he himself was the 
editor of the Powder Magazine. 

“ I have a manuscript here — about Gov- 
ernment — written by a friend of mine ” 

faltered Sue-Betty. 

“ You are very young to be writing articles 
about Government,” observed the editor, 
“ But it’s a sign of the times.” 

“Written by a friend/* Sue-Betty re- 
peated. 

“ I understand, I understand,” said the 
editor. “ They all say that, for fear we 


126 


The Fish Picture 


should not be favourably impressed by their 
exterior. Realise, tender juvenile, there 
are very few things about an author that an 
editor does not know at first glance. Is your 
article illustrated? We cannot consider 
articles without pictures.” 

“ I’m afraid this hasn’t any,” said Sue- 
Betty. ‘‘ The gentleman who wrote it can’t 
even draw a horse.” 

The gentleman who wrote it,” repeated 
the editor, shaking his finger at her. “ Tut- 
tut, little girl ! Do not think to deceive us.” 

Sue-Betty felt very indignant at not being 
believed. She sat right down on the board- 
walk, pulled open her parcel and took out 
Frank’s manuscript. It was typewritten 
very neatly, but had been sent about so much 
and read so often it looked worn. At the 
top was Frank’s name, written with his own 
hand. 

‘‘There! Now you see it is not mine,” 
said Sue-Betty, handing the manuscript over 
to the editor. He seemed very much struck 


The Fish Picture 


127 


by it, turning it over and over, reading the 
title, reading the last page, weighing it in 
his hand. 

What is it about? ” he asked Sue-Betty 
with interest. 

“ It’s about Government,” said Sue-Betty 
for the second time. 

“ Just exactly what we want,” sighed the 
editor. “ But you say there are no illustra- 
tions to go with it.” He handed it back. 

Sue-Betty eagerly leafed through the 
page: all typewriting — not a single pic- 
ture! 

It is a very clever article,” she ventured. 

“We can’t use it, can’t possibly use it,” 
said the editor regretfully. He wrinkled 
his nose so that his glasses fell off on their 
string, put on his other pair, picked up his 
cloth bag, and was going on. 

Tears came to Sue-Betty’s eyes. 

“ Dear me!” exclaimed the editor, sud- 
denly turning back hopefully. “ It just 
occurs to me. Probably you can draw.” 


128 


The Fish Picture 


Only a little,” stammered Sue-Betty. 
‘‘ And — mostly animals.” 

‘‘Never mind! Come on! Hurry up! ” 
cried the editor with the greatest change in 
manner. He took the parcel from Sue- 
Betty, clapped it under his arm with his 
other things and again calling, “ Come 
on ! ” was off to the building with long 
strides. 

“ Only animals! And not very good ani- 
mals,” cried Sue-Betty anxiously, as she 
skurried along behind him. 

“ They’ll do,” the editor called back over 
his shoulder. “ Since we haven’t any better, 
we’ll make them do. Come on! ” 

Sue-Betty was quite out of breath when 
they reached the main building. She was 
glad to have the editor pause a moment on 
the front steps. 

“Do you see the printer in there?” he 
said, pointing through the basement win- 
dow. Inside was a huge machine with a 
man moving about in front of it. “ He has 


The Fish Picture 


129 


to work from now till dark to finish up — so 
if you hurry, we can get your cousin’s article 
in to-day.” 

Now Sue-Betty felt doubtful enough, 
anyway, about being able to draw pictures 
good enough to print. Knowing she was 
expected to do them in a hurry did not 
make her feel any easier. With a heavy 
heart she followed the editor up two flights 
of stairs. 

But when she reached the office, it was 
such a nice, light place with lots of books 
and big tables, that she felt more encour- 
aged. Besides, the editor gave her stacks 
of paper and lots of beautiful coloured pen- 
cils. 

“Now, this button on my desk rings up 
the printer,” said the editor. “When you 
finish, just press it and he’ll be right up to 
take the manuscript and drawings. Now I 
must be off ” 

“Oh, aren’t you going to wait?” cried 
Sue-Betty in dismay. “ Aren’t you going 


130 


The Fish Picture 


to see whether my pictures are good enough, 

and whether they fit in ” 

What do you suppose my time is worth, 
little girl?” cried the editor, almost irri- 
tably. I have four manuscript novels in my 
bag here to revise before to-morrow morn- 
ing. You must make the best pictures you 
can, and we must take the chances on their 
fitting in. Good-afternoon.” 

And he was gone. 

Sue-Betty thought he was asking a pretty 
hard thing of a little girl. She sat and 
sighed and could not think what to 
draw. 

But then she remembered Frank. How 
delighted he would be to see his article 
printed! And he always liked her draw- 
ings, even though they were not so very 
good. 

So she went to work and drew two green 
parrots sitting on a branch, and a lovely 
pink flamingo, walking under the tree. She 
took a great deal of pains with this picture. 


The Fish Picture 


131 

and judged it about the best she had ever 
drawn. 

Then she took another sheet and thought 
and thought 

“ Now then! ” said a sharp voice, and Sue- 
Betty jumped. Beside her stood an ugly, 
blackened little man with bristly hair and 
snappy eyes. He wore an inkstained linen 
coat and his hands were inky — evidently 
the printer from below. 

^^Now then! Got that copy ready?” he 
asked. 

I didn’t ring,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ No, nor wouldn’t, I s’pose, for a year or 
two longer,” he said crossly. “ Meanwhile 
I’m s’posed to wait, I s’pose.” 

This picture is ready, and that’s the 
writing to it,” said Sue-Betty. 

The printer snatched them up. 

‘‘All right; I’ll rush ’em through,” he 
said, nodding. “ See you later ” 

He was starting out. “ But wait,” cried 
Sue-Betty. “ There are going to be more 


The Fish Picture 


132 

pictures. The editor gave me all this 
paper.” 

“ What? More? Well, get a wiggle on. 
ni wait.” 

Sue-Betty wished he would wait down- 
stairs. He leaned over the desk to watch 
her draw. Now it is very hard to do any- 
thing well when somebody you don’t know 
is watching you. Sue-Betty tried to draw 
a salmon leaping up a waterfall, but she 
could not seem to make it look like anything. 
At last she gave it up, and took a fresh piece 
of paper to try again. The printer took up 
the spoiled sheet. 

‘VThat has to be thrown away,” said Sue- 
Betty. 

What for?” asked the printer. 

“ Because it’s not good.” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Aw, it’s good enough,” he said scorn- 
fully. “ The Powder Magazine ain’t so 
particular.” 

“ But nobody would know what that is,” 
said Sue-Betty. 


The Fish Picture 


m 

“ Shucks! I always print under ’em what 
they are.” 

He took out a little stub of a pencil and 
wrote under the picture, “ Fish Served with 
Asparagus.” 

“ It isn’t cooked fish — it’s alive ” be- 

gan Sue-Betty. 

“ Oh, I see,” he exclaimed, and he 
smooched out what he had written and 
wrote again: Tlying-fish, Astray in a 
Cornfield.’ Might call it ‘ On the Road to 
Mandalay,”’ he said thoughtfully. 

At this Sue-Betty began to giggle. 

Well, what is it? ” asked the printer 
impatiently. “ It looks like a fish. What 
shall I write? ” 

“ It’s a leaping salmon; but I’m going to 
draw it again,” said Sue-Betty. So don’t 
write anything. Throw it away.” 

But he calmly wrote under the picture 
what it really was, and then put it in the 
manuscript he had under his arm. 

‘^Go on! Hurry up! Draw a camel or 


134 


The Fish Picture 


something/’ he said to Sue-Betty. Three 
pictures will be enough.” 

Give me back that fish picture,** said 
Sue-Betty emphatically. I don’t want it 
put in the magazine.” 

I won’t give it back. It’s good enough,” 
said the printer. You’re only wasting 
time.” 

Sue-Betty was getting a little hot and 
vexed. She knew perfectly well it was a 
ridiculously bad drawing, and that, if her 
cousin saw it in his article, he would be per- 
fectly disgusted. 

“lam going to do it over again,” she de- 
clared. 

“All right, do it over,” said the printer 
grinning like a jack-lantern. “ But if you 
think Fm going to wait for you here a few 
more months, you’re mighty mistaken. I’ve 
got my work to finish downstairs. These 
here two pictures go in, just as they are; I 
don’t care how long you sit up here and 
draw salmon.” 



At the Head of the Basement Stairs Sue Betty Got 
Hold of the Printer’s Coat Tail 



The Fish Picture 


135 

So saying he walked out of the door. Sue- 
Betty, however, was not going to put up 
with such treatment. She ran after the 
printer and he began to run. Down two 
flights of stairs they flew and along a hall, 
and at the head of the basement stairs, Sue- 
Betty got hold of the printer’s coat tail. The 
next instant she found herself sitting on the 
steps, with his coat in her hands: he had 
slipped out of it and escaped. At the foot 
of the stairs was a door — which he banged. 
When Sue-Betty got down there and tried 
it she found he had shot the bolt on the 
other side. 

She knocked at it and called for a while, 
but the printer would not open. She heard 
his machine begin to go with a big thumping 
noise. 

Sue-Betty did not lose much time at the 
bolted door. She thought of the basement 
windows, and ran up the stairs and out; but 
she found the windows all had iron bars. 
She could only look through in a fury of 


The Fish Picture 


136 

impatience and watch the printer inside, 
attending calmly to his work, just as he had 
been before — except that he was now in his 
shirtsleeves, perforce. The printing ma- 
chine was a huge affair of wheels and large 
rollers and running leather belts. There 
was a hopper at one end, into which the 
printer fed the manuscripts that lay piled 
beside him, and a place where he inked the 
type, and a place where the new magazines 
dropped out, all neatly bound in fire-cracker 
red, ready to be done up for the postman. 

Near the top of the pile of manuscript 
Sue-Betty saw her cousin’s — she could tell 
it from all the rest by its looking so old 
and worn. She knew her ridiculous fish 
picture was in it. In a few minutes more it 
would be printed, and Frank’s clever article 
would be entirely spoiled. 

“ I must stop him. I must,** she declared. 
And as she could do nothing by force, she 
tried strategy. She ran back upstairs to the 
editor’s office, and gave a big push at the 


The Fish Picture 


137 


button on the desk, of which the editor had 
said it called the printer. Then she hid be- 
hind the door and waited, quiet as a mouse. 

Sure enough, the printer presently came 
storming upstairs. He walked right into 
the middle of the room, and demanded, 
breathlessly “ Who rang? Where’s the edi- 
tor? ” 

The same minute Sue-Betty whisked out, 
closed the door, and in a jiffy, had him 
locked in. He began to shout; but she drew 
out the key and rushed downstairs to the 
basement. There she pulled out Cousin 
Frank’s manuscript, found her fish picture, 
and tore it to hundreds of little bits. It was 
the greatest possible relief to her to do that. 
Now she knew it could never be printed, 
and nobody would ever see it again. 

All this had been so exciting that she had 
to sit down on a bench and cool off. The 
big machine was still running, thumping 
away regularly; but as there was nothing 
being put in, of course no magazine came 


The Fish Picture 


138 

out. It seemed to Sue-Betty she really ought 
to finish the printer’s work for him. She 
was afraid to go up and let him out. After 
the trick she had played him, he might be 
very angry. She could hear him bawling 
and pounding away upstairs, and every now 
and then he rang his own call-bell furiously. 
As the gong was just over the machine, it 
made Sue-Betty jump every time. 

So she began to feed the machine, just as 
she had seen the printer do it. Soon the 
bright new magazines began dropping out 
at the other end, as before. 

It was great fun. The only thing Sue- 
Betty minded was the fact that Frank’s 
article had only one picture. However, that 
could not be helped now; and the one pic- 
ture was at least a good one. 

She finished the whole pile of manuscript. 
Then she knew the machine ought to be 
stopped and oiled and cleaned. But she 
could not do it herself and she did not dare 
to let out the printer. 


The Fish Picture 


139 


He’ll be so angry by this time, he might 
be very dangerous,” she told herself. If 
I could only unlock him and get away fast 
enough.” 

She thought a long time, and when she 
finally hit on a plan the thing seemed so 
simple she laughed at herself for not think- 
ing of it sooner. 

The editor’s room, as has been said, was 
in the top story of the building. Sue-Betty 
went out of doors, and threw a pebble up 
at the window, to get the printer’s attention. 
Immediately the window flew open and the 
printer stuck out his head. 

He was angry. High up as he was, and 
glaring down, he looked like a gargoyle. 
Sue-Betty held up the key for him to see. 

“ Let down a piece of string,” she called, 
“ and I’ll send you the key.” 

‘‘ Yes, and you guess you’ll light out, do 
you, before I get a holt of you, eh?” shouted 
the printer. ‘‘Not on your linotype! You 
just come up here and let me out yourself.” 


140 The Fish Picture 

^‘All right, then; I’ll leave the key here 
on this stump and go home,” called Sue- 
Betty in a calm tone. “ You needn’t worry, 

I finished the printing ” 

You — finished — the — printing — ” 
yelled the printer, and he was so angry and 
excited that he put one leg out of the w^indow 
besides his head. “Why, you can’t print. 
You ain’t nothing but a poor, miserable, 
skinny, half-starved author, who can’t even 
get anybody to illustrate your stories. You 
print! A nice mess you’ve probably made of 
it! And I’ll lose my job, along of you. Let 
me out, I say ” 

By this time he had stuck out his other leg 
so only his arms were inside holding on. 
Twisted up like that, his angry face peering 
down between his legs, he looked more like 
a gargoyle than before. 

“ Let down some string,” called Sue- 
Betty, getting a little afraid of him even at 
that distance. “ Let it down before I count 
one hundred, for I’m going away after that.” 


The Fish Picture 


141 

‘‘I won^t — never! roared the printer; 
but the head and the legs disappeared. 

Sue-Betty counted fifty. He was prob- 
ably hunting for string and she counted 
slowly. She counted seventy — no printer at 
the window. She began to be uneasy and 
counted out loud, very slow — shouted, m 
fact, so that he could hear that she had 
reached eighty. 

Suppose there isn’t — eighty-one any 

string — eighty-two — in the office — eighty- 
three. I’ll have to go — eighty-four — and 
he’ll starve — eighty- five — ” (She was half 
singing now) “ To-morrow’s Sunday — 
eighty-six — No one’ll come here — eighty- 
seven — Oh, dear me! — eighty-eight — Prin- 
ter! Do you hear me? — eighty-nine ” 

At last there he was, at the window again, 
and shied a ball of twine at Sue-Betty’s head. 
She easily dodged it. He had held fast the 
end. 

“Silly thing to do!” cried Sue-Betty, 
“ you couldn’t have hurt me, anyway, and 


142 The Fish Picture 

this just makes a longer string to pull 
up.” 

She pulled the inside end from the center 
of the ball, and tied the key to it. The 
printer raged and threatened, and com- 
manded her to break it off and tie it to the 
shortest piece she could; but Sue-Betty 
thought he deserved to be punished. 

Skipping down the boardwalk she was 
soon out of ear-shot. Then she hurried 
home, for she had an hour to make up on 
her nap. 


WORK WITHOUT WAGES 





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WORK WITHOUT WAGES 


I AM going to get a hired man I don’t 
have to pay, to do that sort of work for 
me,” said Mr. Sutherland, as he and Sue- 
Betty stood in the barn watching Charlie 
pump fresh water into the horse-trough. 
Sue-Betty looked up in great surprise. 

“ Do you know one who will come and 
work for nothing?” she asked. 

“ I know one that ought to — he has noth- 
ing to do. He’s always skirmishing around 
the place here, whistling. Why not set him 
to work at my pumping? ” 

He might do it, just to be obliging,” 
said Sue-Betty doubtfully. “ But you 
couldn’t make him do it, could you? ” 
‘‘Well, no! I suppose not,” said Mr. 
Sutherland. “ I suppose I shall have to fool 
him into thinking he does it for fun. And 

145 


146 Work Without Wages 

I’ve bought the machine to fool him with, 
of the Creak and Croker Company, to-day. 
Come up to the house, and I’ll show you a 
picture of it.” 

Very much puzzled, and very eager to 
understand the matter, Sue-Betty trotted 
after him to the house. At his desk, Mr. 
Sutherland opened the catalogue of the 
Creak and Croker Company, and showed 
her a picture of a windmill. 

This did not make matters plain to Sue- 
Betty at all. How could one fool a person 
with a windmill? But Mr. Sutherland only 
laughed and told her to wait till to-morrow 
and see. 

When Sue-Betty stayed at the Suther- 
lands’ farm, she always slept in the little 
bedroom in the wing. This was just under 
the big room where the farm-hands slept, 
and as she always heard the men when they 
got up, she was in the habit of being waked 
early in the morning. She went to bed 
that night meaning to be up especially 


147 


Work Without Wages 

early. She wanted to see the new man as 
soon as he came, and she wanted to see the 
windmill put up. 

The new hired man must have come after 
she went to sleep, for it was certainly a 
stranger, and not one who knew the rules of 
the house, who waked Sue-Betty in the grey 
dawn by the way he rushed down the back 
stairs, and out the back way, slamming every 
door he went through. 

Why, he’ll wake the whole family!” 
thought Sue-Betty anxiously. “ Has no one 
told him he must go tip-toe? ” 

She hastened to get up and dress by the 
dim morning light. Then she hurried away 
to the barn to make the acquaintance of the 
newcomer. Sue-Betty was a great little 
farmer and was more interested in what 
went on at the barn than in anything at the 
house. 

She had never been up quite so early be- 
fore. The sky was white, without any of the 
sunrise colours in the east, and the big barns 


148 Work Without Wages 

looked black against it, and the cows, al- 
ready at the pasture gate, looked dark and 
quiet, like big, black statue cows. The barn 
was still closed up, but from within came 
such a sound of pumping as was never 
heard ; it seemed as if a triple-power steam 
engine had got to work. And with it came 
the gush of water, as if a very cataract was 
pouring into the horse-trough ; and above all 
was the loudest whistling Sue-Betty had 
ever heard. 

‘‘Look out there 1 Keep your hat onl 
Hold onto your wig!” someone shouted as 
she slid open the barn door. Sure enough, 
she was met by a gust of air that would cer- 
tainly have carried off her hat if she had 
had one on ; it blew her hair back straight 
and long, and took her breath away. With 
some difficulty, she got inside, and pulled the 
door shyt; and now, in comparative calm, 
she could see a little of what was going on. 
The barn was still dim and dark, but she 
made out that a huge fellow in blue overalls. 


Work Without Wages 149 

was at the pump, working it furiously and 
whistling a shrill tune. The trough was full 
and overflowing, he was pumping faster 
than the wastepipe could carry it off, and 
the water was swashing and slopping all 
over the floor. 

‘^What a mess!” exclaimed Sue-Betty. 
As neither Mr. Sutherland nor Charlie was 
there to show the new man about things, 
Sue-Betty felt she must undertake it herself. 
She hopped across by the dry places, to get 
near him. He was making so much noise 
she had to shout before he heard her: 

“ Stop pumping, won’t you please? The 
trough is full.” 

‘‘ I’m just giving a few extra strokes for 
good measure,” he shouted back, and kept 
vigorously at work. The flood on the floor 
increased and Sue-Betty was really getting 
frightened, when by good luck there was a 
crack and the handle of the pump broke off. 

Whoopee! ” yelled the new man, and he 
flung the pump handle up towards the raf- 


150 Work Without Wages 

ters ; it spun like a cartwheel and flew into 
the hay loft. He seemed to be glad he had 
broken it. 

Dear me, he will never do at all,” 
thought Sue-Betty. 

Have you come out to help me with the 
chores? ” the new man asked her now, and 
she nodded. “That’s good! Come along! 
Milking next! ” 

She had no time to reply; he went ahead 
and she had to follow. She seemed to be 
sucked along behind him at a tremendous 
pace. They rushed through the horse stable, 
where the straw flew up around them, 
came into the cow stable, and banged the 
door behind them, as if to batter down the 
barn. 

“What’s the use of all this noise?” pro- 
tested Sue-Betty; but the new hired man did 
not have time to listen to her. He burst open 
the door to the barnyard and gave a whoop 
to the cows ; and in they came pell-mell, in 
great disorder. They were so rattled in 


Work Without Wages 151 

their hurry, that half of them got Into the 
wrong stanchions and had to be backed out 
again and righted. Sue-Betty, with the 
greatest difficulty, did this all alone ; the new 
man did not help a bit. He was standing 
on his head in the feed-box, his legs kicking 
in the air, clouds of meal rising around him. 
Every now and then he emerged with a 
scoop full, as if to feed it to a cow, but he 
always managed to spill and scatter it, and 
then dove in after some more. 

Here I Let me do that ; you get the cans 
and pails,” said Sue-Betty at last, and he 
flung her the scoop and dashed away, whist- 
ling as hard as he could go. 

“ At least he doesn’t dawdle, like some of 
them,” thought Sue-Betty, as she began to 
scoop out the feed and give it to the cows 
methodically, as she had seen it done. “ At 
least he seems willing.” 

She felt very proud of the way she was 
feeding the cows, all by herself, and inclined 
to feel friendly towards the new man for let- 


152 Work Without Wages 

ting her do it. Charlie never would have 
let her. If this one had not let her help, 
however,^ it is doubtful whether he would 
ever have got through the work, he made so 
much trouble for himself for nothing. Be- 
fore Sue-Betty had fairly finished, he was 
back, pushing the hand-cart full of milk 
cans and pails. He had brought everything 
he could lay his hands on from the shelves 
where the milk tins were aired, and the cart 
was loaded up tipsily with them. When he 
stopped with a bump, having come in so fast, 
he dumped the whole lot with such a clash 
and clatter as never was heard. 

‘‘ If that doesn’t bring the whole family 
out, they are good sleepers,” thought Sue- 
Betty. She was very much distressed, too, 
on account of the cows. She knew they ought 
to have everything quiet and regular about 
them, especially when they were going to be 
milked. Here this fellow was flying about, 
still whistling vigorously, standing all the 
cans and pails in a long row down the stable. 


Work Without Wages 153 

“ You brought too many/’ said Sue-Betty. 

See me fill ’em all up,” he returned 
cheerfully. 

^‘You can’t; they never give more than 
two cans,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Well, if we haven’t the milk, we have 
the water,” returned the new man very 
coolly. ‘‘ Guess I can pump what I can’t 
milk.” 

“Oh, but Mr. Sutherland wouldn’t like 
that,” cried Sue-Betty scandalised. “ The 
milk can’t be watered; why, it has to be 
sold! ” 

He only guffawed for all reply. They 
each took a pail and went to milking. 

Sue-Betty began with Daisy, because that 
was the cow she had learned on, the cow she 
was always allowed to milk; and the new 
man, apparently for no other reason than to 
be next to her, began on the cow that the 
men usually called the Jig Dancer, because 
she was so uneasy, and ' moved about so 
much. 


154 Work Without Wages 

What do they pay you?” asked the new 
man conversationally, when the milk began 
to sing into the pails. 

“ Nothing; I’m just a friend of the fam- 
ily,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Same here,” said he, cheerfully. Don’t 
get a red cent.” 

‘‘ But I try, as well as I can, to do things 
right,” said Sue-Betty, milking steadily on. 
She hoped he would take the hint. 

“ So do I,” he returned with pride. 
“Whoa, there, you!” (This to the cow, 
who evidently did not like him.) 

“ I try to work slowly and carefully,” said 
Sue-Betty. 

“ I try to work fast, so’s to get the work 
done — (whoa, you old hay- tedder you!) 
— but I’m very careful, same as you,” said 
the new man. “ Fast and careful, that’s my 
motto. (Stop your fooling you crazy, slab- 
sided old weathercock ”) 

“ It is a rule in this stable to be very polite 
to the cows,” Sue-Betty told him; though. 


Work Without Wages 155 

indeed, there did not seem much use in tell- 
ing him anything, he seemed so very well 
satisfied with himself. Just at this moment 
the Jig Dancer kicked over his pail. 

“ You had better let me milk her,” sug- 
gested Sue-Betty soothingly when he rose 
up, snorting. “ She is a little queer — she 
likes peace and quiet.” 

He muttered something Sue-Betty could 
not understand, left the Jig Dancer, and 
went to the next cow, Mollie. Now Mollie 
was usually the gentlest of animals; but this 
morning a perverse spirit seemed to possess 
her. The new man had hardly drawn up 
his stool, when she kicked him over, stool 
and all. 

‘‘ I suppose she’s another one that likes 
peace and quiet,” he blustered. Mighty 
queer way these cattle have of showing 
their peaceful disposition. She*s about as 
peaceful as a torpedo-boat destroyer, 
she is.” 

Why don’t you go and feed the horses? 


156 Work Without Wages 

Then they will be all through eating when 
it’s time to go into the field,” suggested Sue- 
Betty. ‘‘I’ll just finish up the milking, 
there isn’t much more to do.” 

Off he went, post haste, without making 
a single objection. Evidently milking was 
not to his taste. And there was Sue-Betty, 
left alone, with ten cows to milk, and she 
had never milked more than two at a milk- 
ing in all her life before. 

“ I’d rather do it myself than have him 
around,” she said, quite in the tone that Mr. 
Sutherland sometimes used when he did 
some farm work; and she milked steadily 
on. It was unusually easy that morning, 
too. The cows were so pleased that the 
noisy fellow was out of the stable, they gave 
their milk readily and much more than 
usual. Every time Sue-Betty had a pail full 
and emptied it into the strainer over one of 
the cans, she noticed that the amount was 
larger than usual. 

‘ “That’s because I am a little child, and 


Work Without Wages 157 

the cows love me,” said Sue-Betty, who was 
very wise in these important farm things. 
To show her gratitude, she gave each cow a 
handful more of meal when she had done 
milking her. They lowed softly and com- 
fortably. The rising sun came slanting into 
the stable windows. Sue-Betty was so happy 
and so busy, she had to sing. 

Meanwhile there seemed to be great do- 
ings down in the horse stable. The horses 
were neighing, there was a lot of banging 
about and a great swishing of straw. 

He can’t do as much harm in there as 
he can with the cows,” thought Sue-Betty 
and she stuck to her work. 

Suddenly Mr. Sutherland stood beside 
her. He had come in so quietly, she had not 
noticed him. 

How does he seem to be taking hold? ” 
he asked anxiously and in a low voice, point- 
ing with his thumb over his shoulder 
towards the horse stable. 

‘‘Well, he seems strong and willing,” 


158 Work Without Wages 

said Sue-Betty, who did not like to complain 
of her fellow- worker; ‘‘but I am afraid he 
hasn’t had much experience with stock.” 

Experience with stock?** echoed Mr. 
Sutherland in amazement. “ Well, I should 
rather think not I Why, whom do you take 
this fellow for, anyway? Don’t you know 
it’s the wind? ” 

“The wind?** cried Sue-Betty. 

“ Sh-sh! Don’t let him hear we’re talk- 
ing about him,” said Mr. Sutherland in an 
excited whisper. “You know what I’m 
after don’t you? I want to get him to turn 
the windmill. But he only likes to lay his 
hands on things that are loose, and that he 
can make a great clatter with. He thinks 
he’s fit for any kind of work — and yet, if I 
went in there and tried to talk windmill to 
him, ten to one he’d be off.” 

“ Why, he seems so much interested,” 
whispered Sue-Betty. 

“ He likes it, so long as he has his own 
way; that’s the reason I let him into the barn 


159 


Work Without Wages 

to do what he pleases till I can lay my little 
plan to fool him. You keep your eye on 
him, Sue-Betty, and don’t let him break too 
many things. It will cost me seventy-five 
cents to replace that pump-handle.” 

“ I had better finish the milking alone, 
hadn’t I?” whispered Sue-Betty, feeling 
very important. 

“ Oh, by all means ! And by the time 
you’ve finished. I’ll have the windmill set 
up. Creak and Croker’s men are out there 
with it already.” 

He hurried away. Sue-Betty could not 
help thinking he was expecting a good deal 
of a little girl, to milk ten cows alone and 
oversee the wind besides. But sometimes 
the more is expected of one, the more one 
can do. Sue-Betty kept steadily at work, 
and listened meanwhile to all the noises of 
the stable. 

‘‘ Now he is currying Totem, and Totem 
is kicking and stamping,” she thought. 
‘‘ How the horses must hate to have him 


i6o Work Without Wages 

working around them, and how they must 
wonder! The wind never came into their 
stable before. But they must know who he 
is, by the way he whistles. Why didn’t I 
know him by his whistling? It’s as plain 
as anything, now that I know.” 

It had been so dim-dark in the barn be- 
fore, that Sue-Betty had not tried to see what 
her fellow-worker looked like. Now that 
the sun was up, she was eager to get sight 
of him. Anyone would want to see the wind. 
But when he burst in again, after the milk- 
ing was done, it seemed impossible to get a 
good look at him. He dashed past her and 
flung open the stable door to let the cows out, 
and then tore back and forth, unfastening 
the stanchions, yelling at the cows, so that 
they went out on a wild stampede. 

“ He hasn’t got a real body you could 
stick a pin into,” Sue-Betty decided after 
she had tried in vain to decide what he 
looked like. “ If he weren’t wearing those 
common blue overalls, he’d be invisible. I 



Sue Betty had to Run Along at One Side, or He would 
Have Upset the Whole Business 




Work Without Wages i6i 

only seem to get a glimpse of his baloony 
legs, and feel cool when he goes past 
me.” 

She was deeply interested in this discov- 
ery, and very well satisfied; for, it showed 
her that Mr. Sutherland was right and that 
this was really the wind. 

Four cans were brimming full, so there 
was no danger of any chance to water the 
milk. Sue-Betty was glad of that. It was 
clear the wind had no principles whatever. 
And now that the cans were full, the wind 
was no more careful of them than before. 
He loaded them into the cart and went 
clattering away to the spring-house. Sue- 
Betty had to run along at one side, steadying 
the cart with her hand, or he would cer- 
tainly have upset the whole business. At 
the spring-house, he plumped the cans in as 
if his one idea was to see how much water 
he could splash. 

‘‘ Now let’s go and toss the hay,” he said 
to Sue-Betty. “Watch me make it sail 


1 62 Work Without Wages 

around in the air. Bet you by the time I’m 
through, most of it will be a mile away! 
Bet you I can send some of it into the next 
county!” 

“ I’ve no doubt you can,” said Sue-Betty. 
‘‘ But, on this farm, we don’t make hay so 
soon after sunrise. We wait till the heat of 
the day, so the hay will dry quickly.” 

‘‘Then let’s go and pick the peaches,” 
said the wind, who seemed to regard the 
farm work as all play. 

“ The peaches aren’t ripe enough,” said 
Sue-Betty. 

“ Watch me get ’em down, just the same ! ” 
laughed the wind. “ If I get at ’em right, 
down they’ll come like hail ! ” 

“ But they have to be sold,” objected Sue- 
Betty. “ People won’t buy green peaches.” 

“ Tell you what,” said the wind, and he 
crept around behind her and whispered in 
her ear, “ I’ll shake down a few ripe ones, 
and we’ll put those on top of the crates, and 
that’ll fool people.” 


Work Without Wages 163 

‘‘How would you like to be fooled?” 
asked Sue-Betty without turning round, so 
that he should not see her smiling. 

“ Huh! No one could fool me! ” he cried, 
and whirled away from her under the bend- 
ing branches, and cut a pigeon-wing in 
his joy and pride. The leaves danced and 
the grass bent low, and the daisies nodded, 
all in the slanting morning sunbeams. 

“ He is just the one to be fooled,” thought 
Sue-Betty as she watched him whirl about. 
“ He has no head.” 

Really, as nearly as she could see against 
the sun, he had no head at all. It seemed to 
be just a pair of blue overalls full of wind, 
cavorting among the daisies, under the 
trembling leaves. 

“ But what shall we do? ” he sighed, sud- 
denly tired. “ I never saw a farm with so 
little to do.” 

“ Of course, if one avoids the milking 

” murmured Sue-Betty, hoping to 

shame him a little. 


164 Work Without Wages 

‘‘ Let’s go and scatter corn to the 
chickens,” he proposed. 

“ He’ll scatter it too much,” thought Sue- 
Betty; but she started back to the barn with 
him, both running, and pushing the milk 
cart. 

Suddenly the wind went Whew!” and 
stopped short. “Will you look at that?” 
he said to Sue-Betty in a tone of utter dis- 
gust; and he lay flat down in the path and 
would not stir. 

Over by the barn stood a brand new 
windmill, high on its red painted tower. 

“ How pretty! said Sue-Betty. “ What 
is it?” (She pretended she had never seen 
one, just to find out why the wind did not 
like it.) “What is it for? ” 

“You think that’s pretty? ” he demanded 
angrily, rolling over and over. “ I’d like 
to smash it into a hundred and fifty-seven 
little slivers, I would.” 

He would not answer her question as to 
what it was for. He rolled and muttered to 


Work Without Wages 165 

himself a few minutes, and then suddenly 
jumped up. “ Let’s go over to the woodlot 
and see if there aren’t some dead trees that 
want to come out,” he suggested. 

^‘But we haven’t fed the poor, hungry, 
chickens yet,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ You go feed them alone,” said the wind, 
hanging back. 

“ If you don’t come with me,” said Sue- 
Betty, I’ll think you’re afraid of that new 
thing over there, and I’ll call you Fraidcat.” 

Pooh ! I scare other people, no one 
scares me,” he cried, and he blew along 
behind her as she took her way to the 
barn. 

Mr. Sutherland was standing with his 
hands behind his back, looking rather 
anxiously up at his windmill. When Sue- 
Betty and the wind came nearer, he held up 
a hand warningly without looking towards 
them. 

“ Look out, you people! Don’t come too 
close. It’s not very safe.” 


i66 Work Without Wages 

“ What’s the matter? ” asked Sue-Betty, 
as she and the wind came to a halt. 

Oh, everything’s the matter! ” said Mr. 
Sutherland in a cross tone. Those Creak 
and Croker people have made an awfully 
poor job of this, and I’m expecting the 
whole business to topple over.” 

Sue-Betty and the wind crept up a little 
nearer very cautiously, and looked up at 
the windmill wonderingly. 

“ It looks perfectly strong,” said Sue- 
Betty. 

“ Well, perhaps she’ll stand, if we’re very 
careful,” said Mr. Sutherland, not exactly 
hopefully. “ I’ll just see that nobody 
brushes against it.” 

He took a piece of chalk out of his pocket 
and wrote on a board: 

DANGER! No one allowed to go up! ” 

Then he very, very carefully leaned the 
board against the tower, where the little 
iron ladder came down. 

“There, that’ll brace it a bit and keep 


Work Without Wages 167 

mischief-makers away,” he said in a tone of 
satisfaction. “ Kill two birds with one 
stone.” 

He looked at Sue-Betty and gave her a 
quiet little wink. She understood the joke 
now, and almost giggled. Mr. Sutherland 
walked away, never once looking in the 
direction of the wind. 

‘‘ Now we can feed the chickens,” said 
Sue-Betty. The wind did not answer. He 
was snooping round and round the wind- 
mill as if greatly interested. 

Oh, please be careful!” Sue-Betty 
called. “ This thing must have cost a lot of 
money. It would be a shame to push it over 
and break it.” 

“ Who is thinking of breaking it? ” 
snapped the wind. “ Say, you’re hair is 
awfully untidy,” he went on in a rude tone 
of voice. “ You’re a sight! You’d better go 
in and brush it.” 

He just wants to get me away,” thought 
Sue-Betty. She could not help being a little 


i68 'Work Without Wages 

offended, considering that the wind himself 
had blown her hair about; but she ran off 
without answering him a word, and went 
into the house. 

There all was quiet; for, bright morning 
as it was, the family were still in bed. Sue- 
Betty tip-toed to her room, closed her shut- 
ters, and then stood behind them peeping 
through to see what the wind was up to. On 
the lawn she noticed Mr. Sutherland, hiding 
behind a tree. He was peeking out, too. 

First the wind fed the chickens, calling 
them in a loud voice, as if to seem very 
unconcerned, and throwing the grain so far 
it would take the poor things all day to find 
it; then he hurled the grain-measure sky- 
high, and kicked it when it came down, as 
if he were angry at it; and then he began to 
sneak around the windmill. For a time he 
seemed to consider, and all was quiet. 

Suddenly the board marked “ Danger ” 
was whirled away, so that it flew across the 
barnyard and nearly scared the chickens to 


Work Without Wages 169 

death ; and the next instant there was a flash 
of blue overalls running up the little iron 
ladder; the wind appeared on the platform 
above, and the windmill began to work. 
First the wheel turned slowly, and the ma- 
chinery began to creak and croak. But 
when the wind saw he was not hurting the 
hated windmill at all^ he began to work 
harder; and, presently, the big wheel was 
whirling and spinning, and the pumping- 
rod working like mad. 

“ He’s at work! He’s fooled!^* cried Sue- 
Betty excitedly. She caught sight of Mr. 
Sutherland behind his tree, dancing a happy 
jig, and rubbing his hands. This seemed so 
funny to Sue-Betty that she was convulsed 
with laughter; and not to wake the family, 
she had to throw herself upon her bed and 
laugh into her pillow. 

When she had quieted down a little she 
found out that all her work that morning 
had made her pretty tired, so she just lay 
still. After a while the steady sound of the 


lyo Work Without Wages 

windmill, and the angry whistling of the 
wind, lulled her into a little sleep. 

Her mother came in to wake her and 
threw open the shutters, saying it was break- 
fast time. 

Aren’t you rather a lazy little farmer? ” 
she asked; but Sue-Betty could not answer 
and tell her all she had done that morning. 
She was sitting up in bed and looking out of 
the window in great surprise. 

Why, where is the new windmill? ” she 
demanded. 

“ There isn’t any new windmill,” said her 
mother. 

Sure enough, there wasn’t I The place 
was empty. It was plain as day, however, 
what had happened. During the time Sue- 
Betty had slept, the wind’s rage had made 
him so cyclone-strong, that he had carried 
the whole business clean away, tower and 
all. 

Oh, I wish I’d seen it go I ” sighed Sue- 
Betty. 


tWork Without Wages 171 

She was too considerate to speak about 
it to anyone, but she felt Mr. Sutherland 
had been served right for trying to get work 
done without pay. Perhaps he thought so 
himself, for he never said a single word 
about the matter, and was rather serious, not 
to say glum, at breakfast. 




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A'i 


ONE OF PLUTARCH’S LIVES 



ONE OF PLUTARCH’S LIVES 


S U E-BETTY was on the couch in Mr. 

Stimson’s studio, stroking Plutarch, the 
big, grey cat. 

Mr. Stimson, how has a cat nine lives? ” 
she asked. Does it have them one right 
after another, joining on? ” 

“ Well, they say so,” replied Mr. Stimson. 
He was at the easel, his nose so close to the 
canvas it looked as if he were smelling 
the paint. “ They say a cat can get killed 
eight times, and go right on living. But I 
rather think ” 

He stopped, absent-mindedly, and went 
on painting. Sue-Betty waited patiently. 
It was important to her to know what he 
thought: he was her most interesting friend. 
At last, after he had walked off across the 

room, folded his arms and squinted at his 
175 


176 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

canvas, he turned again to the little girl, 
who sat looking at him expectantly. 

You don’t think he has quite nine lives?” 
she asked, pointing at Plutarch. 

“Oh, he must have nine; I’ve always 
heard that,” said Mr. Stimson confidently. 
“ ‘But whether he has them one after an- 
other, or several at a time — that is a very 
interesting question, my child. My own 
idea is, he doubles up on his lives : uses up 
two or three at a time. I dare say Plutarch 
is contemporaneous with himself several 
times over.” 

“ That’s rather hard to understand,” said 
Sue-Betty. 

“ I mean he may be leading one life by 
day and quite a different life by night,” said 
Mr. Stimson, looking thoughtfully at Plu- 
tarch, who kept his green eyes shut. “ I’ve 
known of such cases.” 

“ Oh, so have I,” said Sue-Betty quickly. 

“ And he may lead still a third life — a 
life of contemplation — when he’s snoozing,” 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 177 

continued Mr. Stimson. “And who knows 
but Plutarch may be a different cat to one 
friend from what he is to another. Indeed, 
it is quite possible that he’s using up 
his whole allowance of nine lives at 
once.” 

“ That would be very wasteful,” said Sue- 
Betty. Mr. Stimson nodded and went back 
to his easel. 

It was very quiet in the studio. Sue-Betty 
snuggled down among the cushions, her 
face close to the cat’s. 

“Plutarch, are you asleep?” she whis- 
pered after awhile, laying her hand on his 
side. He purred in response, but did not 
open his eyes. 

“ Because I want to tell you a secret,” 
whispered Sue-Betty. He showed his in- 
terest by rolling out another soft purr. 

“ Plutarch, I have two lives, myself,” 
whispered Sue-Betty. “ What do you think 
of that? ” 

Plutarch was surprised: he opened his 


178 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

green eyes wide for a moment, then closed 
them as if to listen further. 

“ You have nine — and I have two,” con- 
tinued the little girl earnestly: ‘^and — and 
I am using both of mine. I suppose I ought 
to save one, in case of a railroad accident.” 

‘‘ That depends,” said Plutarch, looking 
very wise, with his eyes tight shut. Sue- 
Betty was delighted to have roused his in- 
terest enough to make him speak. She went 
eagerly on. 

“ One is just my everyday, little-girl life, 
in which I have to be taken care of, and in 
which almost everything I try goes wrong. 
But my other life, the one I use mostly at 
night, is so different. In it I can do all sorts 
of things very well, and as easy as anything. 
Once I was a pirate, and once I hunted 
moose, and once I milked ten cows. Oh, 
Plutarch, I like that life best, I do. I 
don’t want to put it aside and save it up ; but 
I ought to save one.” 

I’m not so sure you ought,” said Plu- 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 179 

tarch, opening his eyes now, and speaking 
very seriously. “ If you should live only 
your helpless little-girl life, you might get 
discouraged; and if you should live only the 
other life, in which you can do things, you 
might, perhaps, get very conceited. Better 
run them along, one beside the other. Did 
you ever see the cat-o’-nine-tails? ” 

“ No indeed.” 

^^Well, you can imagine him. Suppose 
he wore his nine tails all fastened one to the 
other, think of the length! It would be a 
nuisance to drag around. But he has them 
all starting out at once, and it makes a mag- 
nificent appendage. He can spread it like 
a peacock. It’s his pride and joy to have 
nine tails. In the same way, if you have 
several lives to live, you can make more of 
yourself by using them together.” 

How I should like to see the cat-o’-nine- 
tails,” sighed Sue-Betty. 

You can’t; he’s gone on a long sea-voy- 
age,” said Plutarch. 


i8o One of Plutarch’s Lives 

“ I should think the sailors would think it 
unlucky, and object to having a cat on 
board,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ They do,” said Plutarch with a smile 
the little girl could not understand. 

Plutarch,” she whispered after a pause, 

what are you like in some of your differ- 
ent lives.” 

‘‘ I’m different in each one,” returned the 
cat. For instance, in one of them I wear 
boots, and talk English.” 

Sue-Betty gave a little start and looked 
down his sleek legs. Sure enough, on his 
hind feet he wore a dear little pair of boots, 
old and shabby, to be sure, but made of 
finely stamped leather, and turned over 
widely at their tops, in a quaint, old-time 
way. 

‘‘Why you’re it now, you dear thing!” 
exclaimed the little girl delightedly. “ Have 
you been it all the time we’ve been talking? ” 

“ Of course I can only talk when I have 
my boots,” said Plutarch. 


One of Plutarch’s Lives i8i 

‘‘ Oh ! Now tell me about the Marquis of 
Carrabas, and the lovely princess he mar- 
ried and the rich castle,” urged Sue-Betty, 
snuggling down nearer to the cat. 

‘‘ Well, the Marquis is still Carrabas, and 
the princess is as lovely as ever— but they’ve 
lost the castle,” returned Plutarch, sadly. 
“ You see, they never had a good title to it. 
My gobbling up the ogre, and pretending 
the miller’s son was a marquis, was a bold 
and successful stroke, — but we could not 
follow it up with any really effective policy. 
We were in possession just about long 
enough for Carrabas to marry the princess, 
and then began a peck of trouble. That 
ogre had about forty-’leven near relatives, 
who, of course, were his legitimate heirs, 
and they all began suing us at once for 
fraudulent possession of the property. We 
had lawsuits, one on top of the other, and 
we lost them, too. Why, we hadn’t the 
shadow of a case, you know. And the king 
wouldn’t or couldn’t take our part. His 


182 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

Majesty had troubles of his own. The mat- 
ter had got into politics, he was openly ac- 
cused of favouring fraud and violence be- 
cause it was his own son-in-law who got the 
benefit. The upshot of it was, Carrabas lost 
everything but his title, and was exiled — so 
he came over here.” 

His title isn’t much use, in America,” 
observed Sue-Betty with regret. 

More than anywhere else,” said Plu- 
tarch. “ They get asked to dinners here, and 
that’s the only way they live, poor things. 
Of course, I have never deserted them. 
When they took ship, I followed them, and 
shipped before the mast as a common sailor, 
to work my passage. That is where I met 
the cat-’o-nine-tails we were speaking of.” 

‘‘ And do they live here, really? Oh, how 
I should like to know them,” sighed the. 
little girl. 

“ I should have to introduce you through 
a skylight, if I introduced you,” returned 
'Plutarch, doubtfully. “They are so poor 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 183 

they live in the very top of a tenement — on 
the floor where nobody pays rent — and I 
always go to them over the roofs. You 
couldn’t go over the roofs, I’m afraid.” 

Oh, please, please try me,” begged Sue- 
Betty, ardently. 

Mr. Stimson had his nose against his can- 
vas again. He never turned round when the 
little girl and the cat jumped from the couch 
and slipped into one of the dormer windows. 
Sue-Betty softly raised the sash, and Plu- 
tarch led the way. The next minute they 
were out, high above the city street, in the 
leader that ran along the edge of the roof. 

‘‘ Take off your shoes,” Plutarch advised, 
and he himself pulled off his boots for safer 
travelling. ‘‘ Then follow me closely, mind 
where you step, and keep perfectly cool.” 

He was off, and Sue-Betty was after him 
like a squirrel. There was evidently some 
safety in going fast, for Plutarch set a pace 
that made the little girl leap and jump to 
keep up with him. Now they were running 


184 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

on all fours up the steep slope of one roof, 
now they were sitting down and sliding in 
one shoot to the gutter on the other side, 
now taking a flying leap to the next roof, and 
so on. Here, where the tops were flat and 
made of tin, they skipped along hand in 
hand, there again they had to balance them- 
selves along a sharp ridge-pole; but never 
once they slipped or stumbled. It was one 
of the jolliest runs Sue-Betty had ever had. 
She looked far away, over the whole city, 
with its steeples against the sky, all in a 
golden afternoon light. It seemed to stretch 
for miles. From the roofs’ edges they some- 
times glimpsed the lively streets far below, 
where everything was bright and little and 
full of motion. And such a sweet fresh wind 
blew in her face as she ran; and she was go- 
ing to meet a real princess, — no wonder the 
little girl was elate. 

They soon came to a poor part of the 
town, and on the flat roof of a tenement, 
where a good deal of washing hung out on 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 185 

lines, Plutarch stopped at a skylight. It 
was half raised, as if for ventilation. Hav- 
ing peeked in himself, Plutarch beckoned 
Sue-Betty to his side. 

She looked down into a poor, forlorn 
little room, where directly under her sat a 
young woman, dressed in a worn-out, faded 
silk dress. She was cleaning a pair of white 
satin slippers, the smallest, daintiest shape 
imaginable. 

‘‘ Princess ! ” called Plutarch softly, where- 
upon she raised a lovely, delicate face, a 
little pale and sad, but very sweet. 

This little girl earnestly desires the 
honour of making your acquaintance,” said 
Plutarch, and thereupon he formally pre- 
sented Sue-Betty to the lady below. 

‘‘Won’t you walk in?” said the Mar- 
chioness of Carrabas, in a gentle voice, smil- 
ing up at them. 

They did not exactly walk in: Plutarch 
took a jump; but the little girl, having no 
cushions on her feet, had to let herself down 


1 86 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

legs first, hanging by the edges of the sky- 
light and then dropping. She felt a little 
embarrassed, doing this. It did not seem 
a very formal way to enter the presence of 
one who was of royal blood ; but the Princess 
shook hands with her so kindly, it put her 
at her ease. 

Then she stroked and kissed Plutarch, 
called him dear, loyal old fellow, said how 
she had missed him, and so on; Sue-Betty, 
meanwhile, looked about the room. 

It was a very poor room, with dingy walls 
and hardly any furniture. The bed was 
made of straw in bags on the floor, only the 
sheets and pillow cases were embroidered 
richly with a crown, to show they belonged 
to the trousseau of a princess royal. Some of 
her beautiful, rich robes too, hung upon the 
wall, and an ermine-trimmed mantle was 
hung across one end of the apartment to 
curtain off a dressing-room. There were, 
besides, two old chairs, a bench, a cook-stove 
and a plain kitchen table ; and that was all. 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 187 

Sue-Betty was much distressed to find a 
lovely lady in these surroundings. 

“ And where is my lord, the Marquis,” 
asked Plutarch, when they had all sat 
down. 

“ He hasn’t come in till after six any night 
this week,” returned the Princess. “ Poor 
fellow, he tries so hard — and has no success 
at all.” 

What,” cried Plutarch, ‘‘ doesn’t he get 
plenty of invitations?” 

We used to get them for every night in 
the week,” she returned. But lately they 
have stopped entirely. I can’t account 
for it.” 

Although it was a desperate matter, she 
spoke with great self-possession, as becomes 
a person of high degree. 

“ We should have starved,” she continued 
sweetly, addressing Sue-Betty in a tone of 
polite conversation, “ if I had not had some 
rings I could sell. I assure you, it has been 
very disagreeable.” 


i88 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

“ And how does Carrabas bear it? ” asked 
Plutarch, anxiously. 

He has been unusually cheerful,” re- 
turned the Marchioness. “ The truth is, 
these dinners we have been going to have 
bored him. He likes bread and cheese at 
home with me, he says. Well, we can’t have 
even that to-night.” She turned to Sue- 
Betty again. ‘‘ I should so like to ask you 
to supper,” she said regretfully, “ but there 
isn’t going to be any supper.” 

At that moment the door suddenly 
opened, and a butcher’s boy stuck in his 
head and shouted loudly: 

“ MEAT!” 

He slapped the parcel down upon the 
floor and slammed the door again. 

It must be a mistake,” said the Princess, 
looking annoyed. Someone else’s meat has 
come here — these people are so careless.” 

Perhaps the Marquis has bought it, and 
sent it home,” suggested Plutarch, who was 
snifling at the package with great interest. 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 189 

‘‘No, indeed, he has no money; no way 
of getting any money,” said the Princess 
decidedly, and a little proudly. “ He only 
gets invitations.” 

At that moment the door burst open again, 
and there stood a big man with a basket on 
his arm. 

“Is this number seventeen?” he asked, 
and when the Princess nodded, he said 
shortly: “Groceries, Ma’m,” marched in 
and began piling a lot of parcels on the 
table. 

“ Take them away. It’s a mistake,” com- 
manded the Princess. “They belong in 
some other house.” 

“No, Ma’m, this here’s the house,” re- 
turned the grocer man respectfully but 
firmly, as he took up his basket and went out. 

“ How very distressing,” said the Prin- 
cess. “ It will only make us hungrier to see 
those things about.” 

“ Perhaps they were sent by a friend, as a 
present,” suggested Sue-Betty. 


190 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

^^Who would send a present of meat 
and groceries to a Marquis? ” asked the 
Princess. Sue-Betty had to admit the 
improbability. 

And then the door opened a third time, 
and in came the Marquis of Carrabas him- 
self. He was very tall and handsome and 
jolly looking, and it did not seem possible 
that such a man could have been out after 
invitations in vain ; but when he had kissed 
the Princess and she asked him, Any 
luck, my love? ” he answered, with a laugh : 
“ Didn’t get a nibble all day.” 

Now he greeted Plutarch, and after that 
he and Sue-Betty were introduced. 

“ I am awfully glad to see you,” he said 
warmly, as he shook her hand. ‘‘ I was 
wishing we could have some company to- 
night. We’re going to have a little supper- 
party, and request the honour of your com- 
pany. I see the things I ordered have 
come ” (he glanced at the groceries and 
meat). “ May we have the pleasure? ” 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 191 

Hat in hand, he swept Sue-Betty a very 
fine bow, and she made a courtesy and ac- 
cepted his invitation. 

“ But my love,” said the Princess, won’t 
you tell us how you happened ?” 

‘‘ Let’s have supper first, and then I’ll 
explain,” cried the Marquis. “ I’m hungry 
as a bear. Puss, old man, you start up a fire, 
will you? My love” (to the Princess) , “ as 
you don’t know much about cooking, sup- 
pose you retire and put on a pretty gown to 
grace our feast.” He took her hand and led 
her to her dressing-room, drawing aside the 
ermine-trimmed mantle for her to pass. She 
paused. 

I think you had better dress, my love,” 
she said. “ There seems to be a good deal 
of whitish dust on your coat.” 

Oh — ah — I thought I had shaken it all 
out,” he exclaimed, looking more annoyed 
than seemed worth while. “ Well, just hand 
me out another coat, dear.” 

He slipped off the one he had on, turned 


192 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

it inside out as if he were anxious to hide the 
dust, and hung it up on a peg. Then he put 
on the one the Princess handed him from 
behind the ermine-trimmed mantle. 

“Now for the supper!” he said in a re- 
lieved tone of voice. 

Plutarch hurried to the stove and the 
Marquis, with a cheerful whistle, began to 
open all the parcels. 

“ I can cook,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Can you, really? Why, that’s awfully 
jolly,” he said, looking very much pleased. 
“ It would be so good of you to help.” 

So she and Plutarch and the Marquis all 
began to get supper and a very good time 
they had over it, too. They broiled chops 
and boiled potatoes and cooked canned corn 
and baked a rice pudding with just as many 
raisins as rice in it. “ Let’s make every- 
thing awfully good,” said the Marquis 
when he dumped the raisins in. And they 
lit a lot of candles stuck in bottles, and set 
the table with the best cut glass and silver 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 193 

that the Princess had got for wedding pres- 
ents, and in the middle they put a dish of 
peanut candy and some mottoes that the 
Marquis had bought. Then there were 
pickles and olives and lots of ginger ale and 
brown bread, and white — and butter, of 
course. 

But we must have some hot bread,” said 
the Marquis. Who can make flap- 
jacks? ” 

can,” said Sue-Betty; she was feeling 
extraordinarily capable. So she mixed 
flour and milk and eggs and things, while 
Plutarch heated the pan ; and then she baked 
the lightest flap-jacks that ever were seen. 
Everytime she threw one up in the air to 
turn it and caught it in the pan, the Marquis 
and Plutarch shouted “ Hurrah.” It was 
the best fun she had ever had. 

When everything was ready the Princess 
came out from behind the curtain, dressed 
so beautifully that Plutarch and the Mar- 
quis shouted hurrah again, and Sue-Betty 


194 of Plutarch’s Lives 

clapped her hands for joy. The gown was 
white, all embroidered with pearls, low- 
necked, and had sleeves that nearly touched 
the floor, and a train that filled the room. 
The Princess smiled a lovely smile, when 
she saw the feast that was spread, and 
said everybody was a dear; and then they all 
sat down to eat. There were only three 
chairs, but Plutarch sat on the Marquis’ 
shoulder and was given the very best bits of 
everything. 

Such a delicious supper — and such de- 
lightful conversation as they had! The 
Marquis told such funny stories that the 
Princess and Sue-Betty laughed till they 
cried; and then they tried to make Plutarch 
drink ginger ale, but when they put the 
glass to his nose the fizz flew out up into 
his eyes and he made faces, till everybody 
roared : After that the Princess grew jolly, 
and every time she offered anyone chops she 
imitated the way the butcher-boy had 
shouted ^^Meat!” so that the others fairly 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 195 

screamed with laughter. At last something 
was said about pirates, and Sue-Betty told 
them ail about her adventure with Willie 
Lamb: and at this they were very serious 
and intensely interested, all leaning on the 
table and asking her eager questions. It 
was a most delightful supper. 

“ And now, my dear,” said the Princess, 
when the table was cleared and they sat 
around drinking ginger ale and eating 
candy, now you must tell us where you got 
the money to buy these things.” 

“My love,” said the Marquis, “Z 
earned it^ 

“Miaul” said Plutarch, — in his great 
surprise he forgot his English and went 
back to his primitive speech. The Princess 
said nothing; but she had turned pale, and 
gazed at her husband with horror. At last 
her lips opened, and she faintly whispered: 

“ How did you earn it? ” 

“By working in a flour-mill,” said the 
Marquis of Carrabas, firmly. 


196 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

They all thought she was going to faint, 
but she recovered herself and rose to her 
feet, holding her pretty head very high. 

“ Carrabas,” she said in a voice, trem- 
bling, but stern, “ have you fallen to this?” 

Now her husband rose too, looking pale 
and proud as she, and Plutarch stood on his 
shoulder, back up, and tail bristling with 
excitement. Sue-Betty gazed from one to 
the other in the greatest alarm. 

Madam,” said the Marquis, in a low 
voice, “ remember that I confessed to you 
the night before we married that I was only 
a miller’s son.” 

“ True,” cried the Princess with flashing 
eyes, “ but you had then, or seemed to have, 
all the instincts of a Marquis.” 

“That may be,” he answered; “but I 
want to prove now that our misfortunes and 
losses have made a better man of me.” 

“ Is it better to work,” cried the Prin- 
cess bitterly, “ than to sit in gold chairs and 
eat ice cream? ” 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 197 

At her words a startled look came over 
her husband’s face. 

Jiminy Crickets,” he exclaimed, / for- 
got the ice cream! 

He hurried to his discarded coat and out 
of the pocket took a wet, soft, shapeless, 
pasteboard ice cream box. He carefully 
opened it and looked in. 

“Might have known it! All melted!” 
he muttered sadly. “ It was vanilla and 
chocolate mixed. What a fool I was to put 
it in my pocket.” 

With a sudden rage he threw the box 
smash into the coal scuttle. At the sight of 
this the Princess burst into a hysterical little 
laugh ; then sat down in her chair, laid her 
face on the table and began to cry. 

Plutarch went bounding to her and began 
to purr and rub his cheek against her in the 
caressing, comforting way that cats have. 
The Marquis hurried to her side and lov- 
ingly bent over her. 

“Never mind, dearest, now that I get 


198 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

money every Saturday, I can buy loads of 
ice cream.” 

It’s not for that I care,” she sobbed. 

It’s for your dignity. If the people at 
home should hear you were working in a 
flour-mill ” 

So much for the people at home,” cried 
Carrabas, snapping his fingers loudly. 

Or the people here that we’ve been 
dining with ” 

‘‘Bah! Most of them have worked in 
mills themselves,” said Carrabas. “ If I 
keep this job and get promoted, some day 
you and I will be entertaining Dukes. 

Not ” he added, smiling at Sue-Betty, 

“ that we’ll have a bit better time then than 
we’ve had to-night.” 

At this the Princess wiped her eyes and 
looked up apologetically. 

“ We are having a beautiful evening and 
it is so kind of you to stay,” she said. “ I’m 
afraid you’ll think it very silly of me to 
cry.” 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 199 

Before Sue-Betty could answer, Plutarch 
spoke up. 

“ It is very silly,” he said gravely. He 
had sat down on the table before the Prin- 
cess, his tail curled around his legs, and he 
said it right into her face. 

‘^What, Plutarch! you too?” cried the 
Princess in astonishment. 

‘‘Yes,” said Plutarch, “me too! I side 
with Carrabas.” 

“ But you’re the one that made a Marquis 
of him.” 

“Well, live and learn!” said the cat. 
“ Have you forgotten the lawsuits? Have 
you forgotten how hungry you’ve been to- 
day? A title without a castle, or a castle 
without a title are no good. You had much 
better join the common people, and eat pea- 
nut candy on Saturday night.” 

“ But,” cried the Princess, still unwilling 
to cede the argument, “ if my husband 
hadn’t gone into the mill, he might still have 
had invitations.” 


200 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

“ Undoubtedly,” said Plutarch. “ They 
would never fail. A Marquis and a Prin- 
cess will always be asked. But in a few 
years your fine clothes will be worn out. 
What then? You can’t go to any more 
parties after that.” 

This impressed the Princess as very 
true. 

She sat looking away into a corner, deep 
in thought a few moments. Finally she 
asked Sue-Betty for her opinion. 

“ I think your Royal Highness would like 
a cunning little flat, with an ash-chute, and a 
cold-storage box out of the kitchen window, 
where you keep cream in funny little bot- 
tles, and a sideboard built in the wall 
for all your silver wedding-presents, and 
couches that turn into beds at night,” said 
Sue-Betty with enthusiasm. She was de- 
scribing Ned and Caroline’s apartment in 
New York, where they had moved when 
they left the lighthouse. The Princess lis- 
tened with evident fascination. 


One of Plutarch’s Lives 201 

“ Could I have all that? ” she asked tim- 
idly, looking up at her husband. 

“ You could move into one to-morrow,” 
he declared. “ If I don’t have to go to any 
more of those tiresome dinners, I can sell 
my diamond studs and get you anything.” 

And I could sell this pearl dress,” she 
cried with sudden enthusiasm, “ and hire a 
cook.” 

“ You darling, would you do that? ’’ cried 
her husband; whereupon they embraced 
each other. 

I say, let’s skip,” whispered Plutarch to 
Sue-Betty. They put a chair on the table, 
climbed up, opened the skylight and got 
out onto the roof; the Marquis and his wife 
never saw them. When they peeked down 
at them, they were still standing with their 
arms around each other, looking into each 
other’s faces with a happy smile. 

They’re all right now,” said Plutarch. 
“ That was a happy thought of yours about 
the flat.” 


202 One of Plutarch’s Lives 

“ Only they can’t have a cook in the size 
I mean,” said Sue-Betty. 

“ Never mind, if they’ve got a thing or 
two to learn yet,” said Plutarch. “ They’re 
started right.” 

Faster than they had come, the little girl 
and the cat sped back across the city roofs. 
The West was still glowing, so long was the 
Spring twilight. 

Mr. Stimson was washing brushes when 
they slipped into the studio window and 
jumped back to their places on the couch. 

“ Plutarch, I’ve had a very nice time,” the 
little girl whispered. Thank you for tak- 
ing me into one of your lives.” 

The cat only purred in reply. His boots 
had disappeared. 


THE END 


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